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The 

Art and the Business of 

Story Writing 



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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA; Ltd. 

TORONTO 



The 

Art and the Business of 
Story Writing 



BY 

WALTER B. PITKIN 

Associate Professor of Philosophy in the School of Journalism 
of Columbia University, 



JSeto gorfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1912 



Copyright, 1912, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1912 



®CI.A327?08 



TO THE TEACHER 

This book is an outgrowth of the belief that fiction has a 
technique no less definite, though much less rigid, than 
the technique of perspective drawing or of harmony and 
counterpoint in music. Such a conviction is not easily 
reached, for the laws of story construction elude their many 
searchers with a persistence most exasperating. The 
long-discouraged investigator naturally falls into the 
thought that pure anarchy reigns in the domain of fantasy; 
and he disguises the absurdity of this thought under the 
hypothesis that a story is the free creation of mind, 
spontaneous in origin and in manner of outworking. 
Unfortunately for the development of fictional technique, 
the half-truth of the hypothesis helps to conceal the flaw 
in his argument. There is no doubt that, in some sense, 
a story is a free creation and spontaneous; and freedom 
seems to connote a certain emancipation from law: 
hence the plausibility of saying that the fiction writer 
works without rule or principle, following only the caprice 
of his imagination. The inference, however, is only 
plausible. There is no soundness in it; and, were we here 
discussing ethics or metaphysics, we might demonstrate 
this assertion by pointing out that free creation and spon- 
taneity do not involve unpatterned behavior nor blind, 
impulsive fashioning. If chaos lurks anywhere in the 
whole performance, it lurks only in the primitive uprush 
of fleeting, disjointed imageries which precede, suggest, 
and inspire the work of art. The work of art, as Poe and 
many another have said, is a piece of cunning and calcula- 
tion no less deliberate than the selling-price of umbrellas ; 
and, once more like this computation, the artistry of the 
fiction writer is regulated by two elemental factors, his 
own purposes and his material. If he has not discovered 
the principles in these which direct his choice, it is because 
they are prodigiously intricate. 

The technique of pictorial composition was early dis- 



vi TO THE TEACHER 

covered, not because painters are cleverer than novelists, 
but because the painter's material is comparatively 
simple. His purpose is to depict Things as They Are 
Seen. Now, these arrange themselves in space according 
to a few easily detectable mathematical laws, namely the 
laws of perspective, while their colors and the harmonies of 
them reduce to a dozen relations most of which even the 
untrained eye partially discerns. So too with the stuff of 
music, which, as the philosopher Pythagoras discovered 
twenty-five centuries ago, orders itself according to a few 
elementary ratios which, in symphony and opera, assume 
a bewildering complexity quite unlike their pure nature. 
It is not alone the simplicity of musical and pictorial 
principles that has brought them so speedily to light. 
They are obvious by virtue of two other peculiarities: 
first, the physical stability and definiteness of their ma- 
terials; and, secondly, the kinship of all the materials 
they relate. Space forms, colors, and sounds are physical 
things which may be produced at will, isolated for scru- 
tiny, arranged and analyzed by the aid of mechanical in- 
struments. Thus through sheer accessibility, they aid 
their investigator. And, in the second place, the signifi- 
cant relations within each of the arts which deal with such 
materials are relations among homogeneous things. 
That is to say, harmony is a relation between tone and 
tone, perspective is a relation between mass and mass in 
space, and color laws are relations between hue and hue. 
Broadly speaking, we may say that all such relations are 
much clearer than those which obtain between hetero- 
geneous things. In evidence of this fact, we have only to 
observe the peculiarly difficult material of the story 
writer. 

His objects are what Aristotle saw them to be, "men in 
action." It is human nature, as it manifests itself in be- 
havior, that he manipulates imaginatively, endows with 
strangely beautiful forms, and sometimes copies. But 
what is this human nature? Nobody knows. The most 
we can say of it is that it embraces a curious horde of con- 
trary impulses, likes and dislikes, retrospects and fore- 
sights, all more or less organized for the furtherance of 
life and the mastery of affairs physical. These warring 
factors bear, in many instances, not the remotest likeness 



TO THE TEACHER vii 

one to another. So different are they in flavor, power, 
and direction that some persons deny their relationship 
altogether, saying with Paul that they belong to two men, 
or saying with modern psychiatry that they belong to a 
multiple personality. Hunger and an eye for beauty are 
alien capacities; yet both enter into life, qualifying its 
configurations. Your sense of justice and your day- 
dreams are infinitely more different than are the bass drum 
and the violin which Wagner brings into harmony; yet 
somehow they combine in your character and contribute 
to it. Finally — crassest heterogeneity of all — there come 
together in every incident of human life those two effi- 
ciencies commonly called the psychical and the physical, 
mind and matter, soul and body. All conduct, actual and 
prospective, matter-of-fact and fantastic, thoughtless and 
reasoned, is inextricably bound up with the stuff of which 
temples and turnips are made. No man can do anything, 
however trivial, without doing it to something or for the 
sake of something. His nature, we might better say, is 
neither fulfilled nor expressed save insofar as he changes 
his environment, or at least actually perpetuates its 
status quo. He is known, not by his faith but only by his 
works. Indeed, we must say even more. His beliefs, 
his most unworldly thoughts are, as revelations and tests 
of his character, utterly meaningless except they refer to 
the furniture and lodgers of the world visible. Strip a 
man of the gold toward which avarice drives him, of the 
fleshpots he craves, of the enemies he loathes, of the shout- 
ing in the marketplace which ambition sighs for, and of 
every other substance of his appetites and antipathies; 
and there will remain of him a formless and unnamable 
nothing, so far as any human vision or insight reaches. 
Literally, all these things give body to his soul. Only by 
their aid does his character take on solidity and contour. 
In this state of affairs, it seems to me, is the ancient 
obstacle of a sound literary technique; and here too 
whispers the hint of its removal. The fiction writer 
would depict human character, in some of its phases; the 
laws of its present presentation must be found in the 
material of human character; this material includes a 
great variety of alien, discordant elements mental and 
physical; only certain combinations of these are possible 



viii TO THE TEACHER 

and a much smaller number is pleasing; and so the writer's 
first task is to discover such. But what does this under- 
taking entail, if not an analysis of those very elements? 
He must proceed exactly as painter and musical composer 
do. They find the major laws of their techniques in the 
qualities and relations of their raw material, namely in 
space forms and colors, in tones and rhythm forms. 
Mastery of these is an indispensable forerunner of every 
good picture and melody. So too with good fiction; it is 
impossible without a thorough, though perhaps very much 
restricted, knowledge of the mind's workings and of the 
world it works over. 

If this is true, then the laws of fiction are not to be 
sought in rhetoric, which is the science of conveying 
ideas effectively and not at all the art of shaping the sub- 
ject matter conveyed. Neither are they to be found 
through the study of literary styles; for style proves to be 
either the more refined, more personal way of conveying 
thoughts or else an inexact name for the peculiar objects 
which a given artist is fond of reporting to us. No, the 
novelist's and the story writer's constructive principles 
lie in no such direction; they lie wholly in the realms of 
psychology and worldly wisdom. The patterns of life 
are revealed only in life; and life is composed of people and 
affairs. 

The following introduction to fictional technique at- 
tempts to give the learner a few hints about the broadest 
characteristics of human conduct, especially those which 
fix the dramatic relation of man to his environment. 
My approach to this topic has been set in advance by 
modern psychology, especially by the writings of John 
Dewey; but in every other respect my analysis owes most 
to modern stories and their masters. It is, indeed, pri- 
marily an empirical research, not a detached theory; its 
findings have been drawn from those same stories, or at 
least verified in them. Like every other investigation of 
human nature, it has encountered depths and entangle- 
ments which refuse to be cleared up in a pretty epigram 
or to be evaded with a loose generalization. Wherever 
that has happened, I have chosen the less pleasant path. 
I have described several problems in language which may 
well bewilder those students who know little of con- 



TO THE TEACHER IX 

temporary psychology, and may even persuade them 
that, if all this be fictional technique, then they will never 
manage to write stories. This danger prompts me to 
address the teacher here. 

It is the teacher's business to say what a brief text-book 
must leave unsaid, to furnish details where it can only 
throw out suggestions, and to correct its erroneous or 
misleading statements. In fictional technique these 
duties become peculiarly arduous, for they require him 
to pursue psychological analyses and to discourse upon all 
the everyday affairs which figure in dramatic situations. 
He becomes perforce a Professor of Things in General. 
And I believe he will succeed in the measure that he 
frankly accepts this title and leads his classes to scrutinize 
mankind as the draughtsman scrutinizes masses, outlines, 
and distances. How he shall accomplish this in detail 
he alone can discover; for his method depends intimately 
upon his fund of information, his philosophy of life, and 
his instinctive manner of dealing with people. But there 
are at least three general rules which should bind him: 
, he should forget rhetoric, he should preach no imitation of 
! masterpieces, and he should compel students to write 
imuch. The last rule requires no comment. As for the 
first, the student who has difficulty in choosing the right 
word or ending a sentence must not be allowed to air 
such troubles before a class in story technique, which is 
concerned with wholly different problems. It is hard 
enough, at best, to hold fictional structure and rhetoric 
apart in the average beginner's mind; rather than increase 
the difficulty, it is advisable to tolerate a moderate 
amount of bad writing. As for the imitation of master- 
pieces, it is harmful chiefly because it turns the writer from 
his proper subject-matter and so postpones his hour of 
insight. A great story is a picture of human nature, 
it is not human nature itself. Being a picture, it lights 
up some one little spot of life and presents this in mag- 
nificent isolation. Always it presents an individual, a 
peculiar dramatic situation, and a somewhat unique 
solution. But this very triumph of art tends to hide from 
the student of technique what he most passionately 
seeks, which is the laws and not the instances of life. 
To ape the appropriate language of Plato, the concrete 



X TO THE TEACHER 

individual blurs and distorts the 'pure forms' of human 
nature; and this too in spite of the fact that these 'forms' 
are all the principles peculiar to individual life. The 
heroes and heroines of the hundred best stories tell us too 
little about life, precisely as the hundred best paintings 
fall far short of revealing the laws of color and composi- 
tion. They produce a vivid impression, but not under- 
standing. 

The final test of every technique is its usefulness in 
practice. So judged, the following studies seem to pos- 
sess a certain value. They have been employed during 
the past three years in teaching about two hundred stu- 
dents, of whom nearly fifty have been journalists and 
unattached professional writers. Stories prepared merely 
as class exercises in that period have been sold to all types 
of periodicals, including The Atlantic Monthly, Every- 
body's, The American, The Outlook, and many others 
equally prominent. Incomplete records show, for these 
same school-room products, the students have received 
nearly five thousand dollars. Most of the MSS., though 
not the best of them, came from previously unsuccessful 
pens. 



TO THE STUDENT 

This book will not aid you in the use of English. It is 
a study of the story writer's subject-matter and, some- 
what incidentally, of his commercial problems and pros- 
pects. It presupposes in you an easy command of simple 
narrative writing. 

Many important points in the text will not appear 
unless you read in advance the stories there cited to illus- 
trate them. You jshould run through each of these stories 
twice; once naturally and without analysis or criticism, 
and once again in a technical mood, after having studied 
the text. 

The ^majority of citations are drawn from the following 
works: 

Balzac, Honore de — Little French Masterpieces, vol. 4 

(Putnam, 1909). 
Coppee, Frangois — Tales (Harper's, 1890). 
Daudet, Alphonse — Little French Masterpieces, vol. 5 

(Putnam, 1909). 
Deland, Margaret — Old Chester Tales (Harper's, 1898). 
Galsworthy, John — A Motley (Scribner's, 1910). 
O. Henry — The Four Million (Doubleday, Page, 1909). 

— Strictly Business (Doubleday, Page, 1909). 

— Whirligigs (Doubleday, Page). 
Howells, W. D. — A Pair of Patient Lovers (Harper's, 1901). 
James, Henry — The Wheel of Time (Harper's, 1893). 
Kipling, Rudyard — Under the Deodars, etc. (Doubleday, 

Page). 
London, Jack — Love of Life (Macmillan, 1907). 
Maupassant, Guy de — Little French Masterpieces, vol. 6 

(Putnam, 1909). 
Moore, George — The Untitled Field (Lippincott, 1903). 
Morris, Gouverneur — It (Scribner's, 1912). 
Poe, E. A. — Tales of Mystery and Imagination. In Every- 
man's Library (Dutton). 

xi 



x ii TO THE STUDENT 

White, Wm. Allen — In Our Town (Doubleday, Page, 

1909). 
Wilkins, Mary E. (Mrs. Freeman) — A Humble Romance 

(Harper's, 1887). 

Perhaps it is not foolish to say here that not all of these 
stories are models of fictional art. They are chosen for 
analysis because they present certain striking virtues or 
certain equally conspicuous defects, and also because 
they represent the extremes of taste, style, and intellec- 
tuality. It is in its applications to such widely divergent 
types of fiction that a theory of technique is put to its 
severest test. 

The exercises at the ends of chapters are very impor- 
tant. However distasteful some of them may be, you 
should complete them conscientiously. They cannot be 
dashed off. A swift writer may finish them all in about 
two thousand hours, but most students will consume three 
thousand or more. 

Do not be frightened if, after several months of hard 
work, you find your writings stiffer and clumsier than ever. 
This deterioration commonly accompanies the early stages 
of technical study in all the arts and it does not dis- 
appear until the principles of technique have become 
established habits and, as it were, apply themselves in all 
the writer's thinking. For this reason, half-mastery of 
technique is slavery. Whoever begins the work should 
make earnest with it and conquer it, though he labor 
five years. 

The best things written on story technique lie scattered 
thinly up and down the long shelves of our libraries. Here a 
paragraph in an essay, there a newspaper interview with 
some author lies buried in the files and archives; and be- 
yond these there is little. Three books there are, though, 
which the serious student may profitably consult on 
many points. The first is Clayton Hamilton's The 
Materials and Methods of Fiction (Baker & Taylor, 1908). 
Though chiefly concerned with the technique of the 
novel — and in its generalities rather than in its details — 
the volume cannot fail to stimulate and enlighten the 
student, in spite of the fact that Mr. Hamilton's point of 
view and several of his most fundamental distinctions 



TO THE STUDENT xiii 

are, in my opinion, incorrect. The second work to be 
recommended is Bliss Perry's A Study of Prose Fiction 
(Houghton Mifflin). In common repute, this deals with 
fictional technique; in truth, though, it does so but 
slightly. It is rather a survey and estimate of authors 
and their ideals. It bears the same relation to genuine 
technique that, say, an appreciation of Chopin's musical 
manner does to Jadassohn's Manual of Harmony. Never- 
theless, as in every clearsighted study of masterpieces, so 
here; there are developed not a few principles and ideals 
vital to one's understanding of literary craftsmanship. 
The third book is J. B. Esenwein's Writing the Short 
Story (Hinds & Noble, 1908). As its title-page indicates, 
this is 'a practical handbook'; and it possesses all the 
virtues and all the defects of such. As an analysis of 
technique, it is almost worthless and often ludicrous. It 
affords the reader no more insight into the basic laws of 
dramatic action and expression than Baedeker's Guide to 
Paris does into French character. But as a collection of 
adages, quotations from celebrities, story specimens, 
references, and commercial advices, it earns a place on 
the young writer's table. 

There are, of course, many other books on the short 
story; but those which are good are either history or 
criticism and hence not shaped to the purposes of the 
would-be writer. So they are not mentioned here. 




TABLE OF CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION 



Why write fiction? 1. The four ends of writing fic- 
tion, 2. Writing for pleasure, 2. Writing for self-cul- 
ture, 4. Writing for profit, 9. Writing for social service, 
10. The relative difficulty of these aims, 12. Shall it be the 
novel or the short story? 13. The purpose of this book,17. 



PART I: THE ART 

Chapter I: What is a Short Story? 21. The double 
ideal, 21. What the single effect is, 21. What dramatic 
narrative is, 23. What a plot is, 24. What the single 
effect involves, 28. Thematic development, 28. Com- 
parison of thematic with didactic stories, 31. Emphatic 
development, 33. Fundamental types of short story, 34. 
Classification of these types, 37. How other forms of 
brief fiction differ from the short story, 37. The short 
story indefinable in terms of its material and outward 
form, 42. Criticism of alleged characteristics of the 
genre, 42. Exercises, 49. 

Chapter II: What Shall You Write About? 50. 
The importance of this question, 50. Limitations of 
theme, 50. Limits set by the story form, 50. Necessity 
of a plot, 50. The 8,000-word limit, 53. Limits of in- 
tricacy, staging and interpretation, 53. Limit set by the 
writer's knowledge and beliefs, 58. Only dramatic 
knowledge is necessary, 58. Sympathy, not belief, re- 
quired, 60. The theme as limited by the reader, 62. 
Available story material, 62. 'Human interest'; what it 
is, 63. What provokes thought? 64. The thought-pro- 
voking situation is a problem, 65, Three varieties of 

xv 



xvi TABLE OF CONTENTS 

situations, 66. The third type fulfills only one story 
ideal, 67. The ascending effect required, 68. The single 
effect produced by depicting a conflict, 72. The two pos- 
sible solutions of this conflict, 72. The uniquely char- 
acteristic act, 72. The consistent act of violation, 73. 
The three levels of conflict, 74. Man and the physical 
world, 74. Man and man, 75. One force with another 
in the same man, 76. Exercises, 78. 

Chapter III: What Shall You Say About It? 82. 
General principles, 82. First tell the story, 82. The six 
essential facts to cover, 84. The material included in the 
simple report, 85. The form of presentation, 86. Inte- 
gration; what it is not, 88. Integration; what it is, 89. 
Integration specifically determined by the particular 
single effect chosen, 91. Integrative intensifiers, 92. 
What is intensity? 92. The general rule for intensifica- 
tion, 95. The five story elements which intensify the 
single effect, 95. 

Sub-chapter A: The Dominant Character, 97. The 
four rules for handling the dominant character, 97. Ex- 
planation of first rule, 97. Explanation of second rule, 98. 
Explanation of third rule, 98. Explanation of fourth 
rule, 103. The mark of human nature, 103. Analysis of 
character, 104. The three stages of rational behavior, 
105. The source of differences in character, 110. Where 
the proof of character is found, 112. The error of the 
so-called psychological story, 112. Mark of the genuine 
psychological story, 116. 

Exercises, 121. 

Sub-chapter B: The Plot Action, 126. Directness, 
126. Two indirections, 127. The use of direct and in- 
direct action, 128. The two typical errors in plot action, 
131. Irrelevancy, 131. Over-intensification, 132. The 
formalist fallacy, 133. Dramatic necessity, 135. 

Exercises, 138. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS xvii 

Sub-chapter C: The Order of Events, 141. What 
order accomplishes, 142. First general law of order, 142. 
The special problems of order, 143. The opening event, 
143. Ten types of opening events, 145. Illustrations of 
these types, 146. 

Exercises, 158. 

The closing event, 159. The direct denouement, 159. 
The significant aftermath, 162. Interpretative comment, 
163. The distribution of events throughout the plot 
action, 166. Rules of this distribution, 167. Illustrations 
of these rules, 168. 

Sub-chapter D: The Point of View, 174. The confu- 
sion on this subject, 174. Two meanings of 'point of 
view', 174. The angle of narration; its three types, 176. 
The objective, 176. The angle of the inactive witness, 
180. The angle of a participant, 185. Angle of narra- 
tion and grammatical form, 186. 

Exercises, 188. 

The artist's attitude, 190. Attitude and style, 191. 

Sub-chapter E: Atmosphere, 193. What atmosphere 
is, 193. Atmosphere as the single effect, 195. Why the 
atmosphere story is difficult, 196. The narrow range of 
atmospheric effects, 197. A lack of harmony between 
two types of feelings, 199. The natural theme of the 
atmosphere story, 204. Atmosphere as an intensifier, 
207. How the intensifying effect is conveyed by atmos- 
phere, 207. How intensifying atmosphere is integrated, 
213. The law of frequency, 215. The point of view in 
depicting the setting, 216. 

Exercises, 217. 



xviii TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PART II: THE BUSINESS OF THE SHORT 
STORY 

The many reading publics, 230. The difference be- 
tween the novel's field and the story's, 233. Nature 
of the modern magazine, 233. Three undesired types of 
story, 235. The so-called 'serious story/ 238. The aim 
of the magazine story, 241. Modern literary specializa- 
tion, 244. Its rules of procedure, 245. Imaginative ex- 
perimenting, 246. The story writer's prospects, 248. 
Aids in selling fiction, 251. Some elementary rules and 
warnings, 253. 






THE ART AND THE BUSINESS 
OF STORY WRITING 



INTRODUCTION 

The Purposes 

1. Why write fiction? This question may seem im- 
pertinent, at the beginning of a book which will be read 
chiefly by persons who have resolved to write fiction. 
But it is not. It leads us into a problem that must be 
squarely faced and cleanly solved by each man for him- 
self, before he enters seriously upon literary work. That 
problem has to do with the purposes of such an under- 
taking, t 

Purposes shape one's conduct in literature no less' 
than in war, love, and politics. Whether the author 1 
knows it or not, every plot he invents and every turn* 
he gives to its telling are qualified by the use he hopes to 
make of the finished product. It matters not whether 
he writes according to some editor's order or to establish 
a creed or simply to delight himself; the influence of the 
aim is ever present, subtle and pervasive. So deep is it 
that many a story theme takes on a very different form 
with each new purpose of the writer's. Again, some 
themes and modes of treatment are wonderfully adapted 
to certain ends and impossible for others. Thus, the 
severe and swift art of which Maupassant was so fond 
is peculiarly the weapon of a writer who is more interested 
in conveying an impression than in interpreting human 

I 



2 SHORT STORY WRITING 

nature or affairs. Other technical devices have their 
own exclusive utility, which we shall inspect in other 
chapters. Hardly any material of fiction or any narra- 
tive principle can be employed without regard to the aim 
of the particular piece of writing attempted. 

If this is true, it must be evident that whoever writes 
fiction aimlessly, never surveying the various advantages 
of the work nor choosing one advantage as the end to be 
sought, foredooms himself to much grief. He may win 
out, in the long run; but his victory will be dearly won. 
He will probably spend years writing for the public 
stories which please only himself, and he may wreck his 
natural style by trying to make it serve an end which it 
cannot attain. This becomes clear the moment we 
consider the legitimate purposes of writing fiction. 

2. The four ends of writing fiction. There are four 
obvious rational desires which might, singly or collectively, 
urge a man to compose a story. First, he might wish for 
the private gratification of expressing his own fancies. 
Secondly, he might hope to acquire, through practice, an 
intimate knowledge of literary values which would 
heighten his appreciation of books and men. In the 
third place, he might seek a livelihood by entertaining 
a large circle of readers. Or, finally, he might aspire to 
expose some sham, to crush some public infamy, to raise 
some all but forgotten ideal, or otherwise to better the 
world. Private pleasure, self-culture, profit, and social 
service; these are the prospects which may allure. And 
now a word about each. 

a. Writing for pleasure. People differ astonishingly in 
the immediate satisfaction they gain from imagina ive 
writing. Many who are gifted compose without joy or 
even with antipathy; and many who are not sweep into 
raptures at every inconsequential motion of their mediocre 
wits. It is important to observe- this fact here, because 



INTRODUCTION 3 

of the prevalent instinctive superstition that whoever 
has a strong impulse to write and finds much pleasure in 
yielding to it is endowed with those talents which pub- 
lishers are eager to engage. That this is a superstition 
and nothing more, every experienced writer and critic 
knows. There is only the most tenuous connection be- 
tween the market value of a tale and the fun one gets 
from producing it. 

Consider two opposite modern instances, Edna Ferber 
and Gellet Burgess. If newspaper interviews are to be 
trusted, Miss Ferber drags herself gloomily to her faithful 
typewriter, for the composing of an Emma McChesney 
story. Nevertheless, her output is the very highest grade 
of ephemeral writing, immensely popular and correspond- 
ingly profitable. How different Burgess and his Lady 
Mechante! In the confessional introduction to this weird 
volume, he admits that he is out for a lark and that he is 
having a glorious time compiling these Precious Episodes 
in the Life of a Naughty Nonpareille. You can fairly 
hear him chuckling behind every sentence. But what 
is the material outcome of this hilarity? 'Helter-skelter 
rigmarole/ Burgess calls the book; and nobody will 
challenge the opinion. It reeks with jests comprehensible 
only to the few who happen to have thought about some 
things precisely as the author has. Its satire is such as 
can be sensed from only one point of view, and this 
point of view cannot be attained save by following Burgess 
through life and seeing the world through Burgess* eyes. 
If you have done this, you may scream over some chapters 
of Lady Mechante. If you haven't, you will fling the 
book into the waste basket before you have finished the 
first page. 

Now, the moral of this contrast is clear. Story writing 
may serve as a merely private entertainment, almost as 
private as the child's game of making faces at himself in a 



4 SHORT STORY WRITING 

mirror. If you write only for this purpose, do not expect 
the world to enjoy your inventions. Probably it will 
not; and the chances of its doing so dwindle in the same 
measure that your personal experiences, temperament, 
and interests deviate from those of the ordinary man. 
Whether it is worth while to write stories that no public 
will read is a question which each man must answer for 
himself. It lies beyond the jurisdiction of critic and 
editor. That not a few persons do write — and write 
well — in secret, neither hoping nor wishing to reach a 
public, is pretty certain. I know two such authors in 
New York City; they have produced stories worthy of the 
best magazines, but they will not sell them. They write 
tales as they play the piano, 'just for fun/ Being rich, 
they are not tempted by the market's rewards. Being 
cultured, the alleged fame of the fictionist does not dazzle 
them. And I doubt not that there are many others like 
them. 

b. Writing for self -culture. I suppose noDody save a 
handful of literary critics deliberately writes fiction in 
order to acquire fresh insight into the thoughts of great 
writers, their style, and the technique of the art. In our 
schools and colleges almost every other literary form is 
extensively practiced, but especially by the essay. Stu- 
dents are requested to write essays and essays : essays on 
Burke, essays on In Memoriam, essays on The Right and 
The Wrong, essays on Wagner's leitmotive, essays on Kip- 
ling's Things as They Are, and Heaven knows what else. 
Now, I doubt whether such a program cultivates self- 
expression and critical sensitivity as well as half the 
amount of drill in imaginative narrative would. It is 
notorious that the essay is one of the most difficult of all 
enterprises with the pen; some would say the stubbornest. 
There are more excellent fictionists than moderately 
competent essayists, and over against every five master 



INTRODUCTION 3 

novelists stands not more than one master of the essay. 
This is no accident; it is due chiefly to the intrinsic realism 
and philosophical bias of the essay. The fabric of every 
essay must be fact Its author must have something to 
say about some state of affairs in the world. He may have 
misunderstood these affairs, or he may be grossly preju- 
diced toward them, or he may perceive them in a com- 
monplace way; but he cannot write effectively unless he 
holds a clear opinion about them and can defend it with 
arguments. This is an inflexible rule, applying not only 
to the smooth solemnities of a Macaulay but also to 
the genial essay, which Dr. Crothers has lately revived 
with such success. Even in its most whimsical flights, 
the essayist's pen is ever pressing hard against Circum- 
stance. It is Circumstance and nothing else that provokes 
him to write, and it is about Circumstance that he speaks. 
The unfitness of essay writing as a means to acquiring 
skill in self-expression now appears. No man can write 
well on matters about which he has no sharp opinion. 
Hence it is that the essay is exclusively the instrument of a 
mature mind (mature at least with respect to the particular 
subj ect matter) . But the undergraduate — and the learner 
generally — is not mature. He studies composition to 
attain maturity. And his embarrassment as an essayist is 
mightily aggravated by the fact that it is much harder 
to discourse lucidly on things today than in earlier 
generations. The world about which he must say some- 
thing is immeasurably more complicated and vaster 
than the toy cosmos which Addison and Lamb knew. 
Things are now hopelessly entangled with one another. 
One could scarcely discourse on Roast Pig at this hour, 
without commenting learnedly upon carbohydrates, 
trichinosis, and the Meat Trust. Worse yet, the old 
ideals of life are all under suspicion, and the new are as 
vague as images on ruffled water; so that the young 



6 SHORT STORY WRITING 

writer has no philosophy, no point of view — or else — 
worse luck! — he has one shamelessly stolen from an- 
tiquity and badly damaged in transit. 

In view of all this, the learner would advance much 
more swiftly, were he to describe only those affairs and 
people which he knows absolutely. In doing that, he 
would at least begin at the right place. But with what 
is he so marvelously intimate? Only with events which 
he has witnessed or conjured up in his own imagination. 
Only with the appearance and flow of them, be it added, 
and not with their import. Let him describe them as he 
witnesses them, interpreting them not at all. Let him 
report, but not explain. Then he will be at his best. 1 

I shall venture to say, then, that, from the points of 
view of educator and learner, this, the most neglected 
purpose, is the most important one. Writing fiction 
for the sake of the skill and the knowledge it brings 
would probably improve almost every educated man and 

x It is idle to urge, against this opinion, that college fiction is 
immature. This oft-repeated censure is usually founded upon 
two unfair comparisons; first, the comparison of undergraduate 
works with those of veteran authors; and, secondly, a comparison 
of what the undergraduate has to say with what he has learned. 
The former contrast is foolish. The latter rests upon the 
mistaken assumption that the quantity of a person's information 
is a just measure of the number and vigor of the opinions he ought 
to have. So far is this notion removed from the truth that the 
opposite is often correct: the greater the mass of facts that are 
being crammed into one's head, the fewer one's thoughts, during 
the cramming. Undergraduate essays ought to be inferior, on 
the whole. As for fiction, the equitable critic will set the learner's 
narratives over against his essays. And he will discover the con- 
spicuous superiority of the former. In freshness, ease, sincerity 
and finish, the stories appearing in the undergraduate magazines 
of the leading American colleges assuredly outrank the essays. 
This becomes doubly significant when we recall that their authors 
have been drilled in the composing of essays, but little or not at all 
in story writing. 



INTRODUCTION 7 

woman. It would give new insight into literary structure. 
This, to be sure, is the least of its benefits; but it is not 
to be despised. /To read a novel with new eyes; to per- 
ceive in a story something more than off-hand chatter, — 
surely this power is worth many times the efforts its 
acquisition will cost. But the advantage does not end 
here. With it come a quickened sense of artistic values, 
a more supple style, and an enlivening of the imagination. 
This last is, by all odds, the supreme gain. Imagination 
is the first and indispensable activity of thought, be it 
scientific or practical or artistic. While it lacks the dig- 
nity which the reasoning power enjoys in common repute, 
it really stands not a degree below the latter. In the 
affairs of life it stands one in good stead more frequently 
than the sterner intellectual skill does. Assign to almost 
any task requiring thought an imaginative man with scant 
logic and an unimaginative logician; nine times out of ten 
the former will handle it more successfully. And any 
psychologist can tell you why. Would it not seem wise 
then to train young men and women in the exercise of 
fancy? 

Against this suggestion arises the cry that such a course 
leads to frivolity and flightiness. Matter-of-fact folks 
will assure you that people are full enough of fancies, with- 
out any encouragement from academic authorities. They 
will prove that only demonstrated truths enter into a 
sound education. But both of these propositions are 
fatally wrong. The first rests upon a subtle equivoca- 
tion in the word ' fancy ', which is identified with ' imagi- 
nation ' and then lends its invidious connotation to the 
latter term. In this sense, l imagining' comes to mean 
idle dreaming or, worse yet, wild belief. Now, beyond 
doubt, there is altogether too much of that abroad. But 
it is not genuine imagining. On the contrary, it is unimag- 
inativeness. Sometimes we call it stupidity. Some- 



8 SHORT STORY WRITING 

times it is superstition. Sometimes it is gullibility. 
Sometimes it is 'the artistic temperament'. But always 
it is one and only one thing at bottom; to wit, the absence 
of quick, variegated, appropriate, connected imagery. 
The man in whom such imagery wells up richly is the 
sane man, the well-balanced thinker. It supplies him 
with doubts, cautions, and leads. And these are the very 
things which the unbalanced thinker and the 'artistic 
temperament ' lack. 

In one of the soundest of his queer essays Chesterton 
makes an observation which bears upon this matter. 

The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts 
amateurs. It is a disease which arises from men not 
having sufficient power of expression to utter and get rid 
of the element of art in their being. It is healthful to 
every sane man to utter the art within him; it is essential 
to every sane man to get rid of the art within him at all 
costs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid 
of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. 
But in artists of less force the thing becomes a pressure, 
and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic 
temperament. Thus, very great artists are able to be 
ordinary men — men like Shakespeare or Browning. . . . 

It need hardly be said that this is the real explanation 
of the thing which has puzzled so many dilettante critics, 
the problem of the extreme ordinariness of the behavior 
of so many great geniuses. . . . Their behavior was so 
ordinary that it was not recorded. . . . The modern 
artistic temperament cannot understand how a man who 
could write such lyrics as Shakespeare wrote could be as 
keen as Shakespeare was on business transactions in a 
little town in Warwickshire. 1 

How is it that amateurs lack this power to express the 
art that is in them? Have they no ideas? Indeed, they 
have them aplenty; they can state them readily as pure 
propositions, but not in full artistic narrative. Are they 

1 Heretics. Essay on the Wit of Whistler, 



INTRODUCTION 9 

ignorant of words? Rarely. Can they not reason? Well 
enough for the purposes of art. Where then can their 
difficulty lie, if not in the paucity or sluggishness of their 
imagination? It must be that they sit hour after hour, 
waiting for the right word to pop up, as poor Flaubert 
did. And to catch up the loose threads of a plot, they 
have to weave and unravel almost as long as Penelope did. 

The very same thing might be said of the superstitious 
man, the mystic and the dupe. It is the unimaginative 
savage who confuses his dreams with realities. It is the 
dull Bedouin who thinks the stalking pillar of sand that 
marches in the desert whirlwind is a living jinn. And 
it is the thick-witted peasant who believes in ghosts and 
patriotism and politician's promises. In the arsenal of 
such minds there is neither powder nor shot with which to 
combat any idea. They cannot see why the dead may not 
return in dreams, or why a thing that moves without visi- 
ble impetus is not alive, or why an alderman who gives 
Christmas turkeys to the poor and takes off his hat to 
the Stars and Stripes is not a high-minded statesman. 

This defect is, in large measure, an evil endowment. 
So too is a copious fancy a gift from some good fairy. 
Nevertheless, deliberate training can improve the weaker 
and release fresh energies of the stronger imagination. 
This is why the writing of fiction for self-culture is the 
most important of the four purposes we are here discuss- 
ing. 

c. Writing for profit. This is the commonest, the most 
obvious, and the most speculative of the four aims. 
Unlike the two purposes just considered, it imposes a 
variety of restrictions which some authors find exceedingly 
irksome and others do not. These restrictions are vital 
to commercial success and difficult to define. Many 
experienced editors are unable to phrase them intelligibly. 
The writer who senses them and reckons with them sue- 



10 SHORT STORY WRITING 

cessfully will make money, which is a desirable thing. 
But, if he remains blind to them, nothing short of genius 
will save him. What the restrictions are will be later dis- 
cussed. At present I wish only to insist upon the much 
challenged fact that writing for profit is a distinct ideal, 
not at all incidental to some other supposedly finer 
one. It sets its own course and encounters its own 
problems. 

d. Writing for social service. Concerning the pro- 
priety of this aim artists differ irreconcilably. Some of 
them insist that the only legitimate aim of painting or 
singing or writing is to delight somebody. Others say 
that the highest art is glorified preaching, and that the 
beauties of it are only means to the finer moral end. 
This latter position has been brilliantly defended by the 
versatile Chesterton, whom we may again quote. 

Now of all, or nearly all, the able modern writers whom 
I have briefly studied in this book this is especially and 
pleasingly true, that they do each of them have a con- 
structive and affirmative view, and that they do take it 
seriously and ask us to take it seriously. ... In 
the fin de siecle atmosphere every one was crying out 
that literature should be free from all causes and ethical 
creeds. Art was to produce only exquisite workman- 
ship, and it was especially the note of those days to de- 
mand brilliant plays and brilliant short stories. And 
when they got them, they got them from a couple of 
moralists. The best short stories were written by a man 
trying to preach Imperialism. The best plays were 
written by a man trying to preach Socialism. All the 
art of the artists looked tiny and tedious beside the art 
which was a by-product of propaganda. 

The reason, indeed, is very simple. A man cannot 
be wise enough to be a great artist without being wise 
enough to wish to be a philosopher. A man cannot have 
the energy to produce good art without having the 
energy to wish to pass beyond it When we 



INTRODUCTION 11 

want any art tolerably brisk and bold, we have to go to 
the doctrinaires. 1 

This is a happy exaggeration, which Chesterton would 
have some trouble in defending. Not every 'tolerably 
brisk and bold' work of art has come from a doctrinaire. 
Macbeth is surely as 'brisk and bold' as any of Mr. Shaw's 
polemical plays; but Shakespeare never tried to preach. 
Indeed, Tolstoi, Shaw, and others would have us believe 
that he never had an idea of his own, nor so much as a 
genuine, gripping conviction on any subject whatever. 
And all of Professor Moulton's ingenious attempts to 
discover in his plays a complete and lofty philosophy are 
but so much straw against the fire of Tolstoi's attack. 
Again, Poe's tales certainly ward off slumber as well as 
Chesterton's stories about Father Brown; yet Poe had no 
propaganda, and precious little moral earnestness. And 
so we might prolong the list of glittering exceptions. 

Nevertheless, the greater truth is on Chesterton's 
side. More than ever before, fiction today is the moralist's 
weapon. More than ever before, preachers of every 
stripe, from Kipling to Henry Van Dyke, use it success- 
fully. And this advance is due in no slight degree to the 
clearing up of fictional technique since Poe and Mau- 
passant. It is not so very long ago that didactic novels 
and stories were insufferable. The moral sat behind 
you and whispered noisily into your ear, while you strove 
to follow the players and the play. This was quite the 
style in eighteenth-century writings, especially the French; 
and it was taken up by Maria Edgeworth, in whose 
hands it became ludicrous. As late as 1880, American 
magazines were still publishing stuff rankly reminiscent 
of that manner. But now it survives nowhere in litera- 

1 Heretics, 288, etc. 



12 SHORT STORY WRITING 

ture; to find it you must turn to Sunday School weeklies 
and the Ladies' Home Journal. Writers have outgrown 
it, and so has the cultured public. Curiously enough, 
though, its disappearance has not decreased the preacher's 
opportunities. Rather has it widened them. It has 
done so, however, by increasing the technical difficul- 
ties. No longer may he insert a moral disquisition in 
the midst of a love scene. He must write straight 
drama, weaving his thesis into it so deftly that he in- 
seminates your mind without your knowing it. If he 
cannot accomplish this, he fails altogether. But if he 
can, even imperfectly, his influence will exceed by a 
hundred-fold that of the old-school author-preacher. 

No, the preacher's opportunities have not lessened. 
But the number of preachers who can seize them has. 
Many a high school graduate of the rising generation 
could grind out stories of the Maria Edgeworth stamp, 
but only a skilled and facile mind could produce a fiction- 
sermon which a good modern magazine would publish. 
And this brings us to a moral which will soon be dinned 
tediously into the learner's ears : if your purpose in writing 
fiction is this one, you must master the art. For the didac- 
tic story, more than any other, must sustain its dramatic 
interests perfectly. Ordinary art conceals itself; but the 
sermon-story must hide not only its art but also its moral. 
It calls for double magic. 

3. The relative difficulty of these aims. The order in 
which we have discussed these four purposes is the order 
of their ease. To write merely for one's own pleasure is 
very simple. You may give yourself free rein. No 
style is too exotic, no character too weird, no plot too 
improbable, no theme too abstruse or too trivial to em- 
ploy, if you like it. Many become impossible, however, 
as soon as you set out to write for self-culture. A thor- 
ough knowledge of good art is not to be achieved unless 



INTRODUCTION 13 

you master its practices. Like the mastery of painting or 
music, it involves many little drudgeries, not the least 
irritating of which is the dissecting of famous techniques. 
When he becomes a professional story teller, the author's 
trials increase again. He must hold aloof from many fas- 
cinating themes and eschew styles, turns, and effects dear 
to an artist and trained critic but invisible or abhorrent to 
the multitude. Also he must shape his program with an 
eye to what other authors are doing and what the wide 
world is talking about. For instance, at the present 
moment, some editors are casting about eagerly for good 
stories that have to do with woman's suffrage; while others 
seek comedies and tragedies of the High Cost of Living. A 
fair piece of work on one of these themes will, by virtue of 
its timeliness, be preferred above a much finer story about 
the men and griefs of yesterday. Hence' the professional 
author must write with his ear to the ground — which is 
an awkward position and not always dignified. It is 
neither dishonorable nor debasing; at worst, it calls for the 
shrewdness of a shopkeeper and for a limber mind. Most 
difficult of all is the didactic aim. Why it is has been 
indicated at the close of Section 2 and will be demonstrated 
elsewhere. 

And now let the opening question be repeated. Why 
write fiction? Well, the answer rests with you; but you 
must choose from among these four purposes. And 
you must bear in mind, from first to last, that each of 
them sets up a distinct enterprise whose standards, 
methods, and limitations must be studied apart from 
those of the other three. Also you must know that, 
while the enterprises are not incompatible, success in 
one does not necessarily entail success in another. 

4. Shall it he the novel or the short story? Suppose you 
have resolved to write fiction. The question then arises: 
which of the two leading prose forms shall you employ? 



14 SHORT STORY WRITING 

(For reasons soon to be shown, we need not consider the 
minor forms, such as the novelette, the tale, the fable, 
etc.) Now, the answer can be deduced from the purpose 
you have chosen. 

a. If you write for pleasure, choose whichever form you 
like. 

b. If you write for self-culture, choose the short story. 

c. If you write for profit, choose the short story, at least 
until your skill and reputation are established, 

d. i/ you write for reform, choose only the novel. 

a. This rule is perfectly obvious. 

b. For the writer desiring to understand literary values 
intimately, the short story affords opportunities vastly 
richer than those of the novel. And the reasons are 
three: (1) The student can experiment more rapidly 
with the short story, because of its brevity. He can 
write twenty stories in the time required for one novel. 
This repetition of the entire technique hastens learning. 
(2) The short story contains every artistic device em- 
ployed in the novel, except high complication (such as 
sub-plots). Hence, in mastering story technique, the 
student masters the virtues of the novel. (3) The finer 
types of story demand many artistic qualities which the 
novel does not. These qualities derive chiefly from the 
formal restrictions that are placed upon the theme, the 
length, and the intricacy of the story. Brander Matthews 
has pointed out some requirements and effects peculiar 
to the highest, most difficult of short story forms, namely 
the pure dramatic story. What he has to say about them 
holds of the commoner story forms much less rigorously, 
but broadly enough to illustrate our present point. 

First, as to the theme: 

The Short-story, far more than the Novel even, de- 
mands a subject. The Short-story is nothing if there is 
no story to tell; — one might almost say that a Short- 



INTRODUCTION 15 

story is nothing if it has no plot, — except that "plot" 
may suggest to some readers a complication and an 
elaboration which are not really needful. 

Second, as to the structure: 

The Short-story fulfils the three false unities of the 
French classic drama: it shows one action, in one place, on 
one day. A Short-story deals with a single character, a 
single event, a single emotion or the series of emotions 
called forth by a single situation. 

Third, as to the artistic skill required: 

No one has ever succeeded as a writer of Short-stories 
who had not ingenuity, originality, and compression; 
and most of those who have succeeded in this line had 
also the touch of fantasy. But there are not a few 
successful novelists lacking, not only in fantasy and com- 
pression, but also in ingenuity and originality; they had 
other qualities, no doubt, but these they had not. If an 
example must be given, the name of Anthony Trollope 
will occur to all. Fantasy was a thing he abhorred; 
compression he knew not; and originality and ingenuity 
can be conceded to him only by a strong stretch of the 
ordinary meaning of the words. Other qualities he had 
in plenty, but not these. And, not having them, he 
was not a writer of Short-stories. Judging from his 
essay on Hawthorne, one may even go so far as to say 
that Trollope did not know a good Short-story when he 
saw it. 1 

The short story is indeed 'a high and difficult depart- 
ment of fiction.' And, as Canby says, 'In its capacity 
for perfection of structure, for nice discrimination in means 
and for a satisfying exposition of the full power of words, 
it is much superior to the novel, and can rank only below 
the poem.' It will teach the student much more than 
the novel can about the deep virtues of restraint, clarity, 
directness and action. Indeed, it has come to be 

1 The Philosophy of the Short-story, 32, 16, 23, etc. 



16 SHORT STORY WRITING 

recognized as the natural approach to the' novelist's 
craft. And history confirms this judgment, for nearly all 
great fictionists since the mid-nineteenth century have 
begun as story writers. 

c. The short story can be turned to profit much more 
promptly and surely than the novel. A person who can 
write at all can finish a score of stories in the time required 
for one novel, and the chances of selling half of the 
twenty are much better than those of selling the novel. 
Furthermore, the stories will be paid for upon acceptance, 
or soon afterward; whereas the returns from the novel 
will come mostly in the form of royalties spread over a 
period of years. Finally, the story market is better than 
the novel market. Ten mediocre tales will yield more 
than one fair novel (unless the latter is sold first to a 
magazine for serial publication). And five good stories 
will pay more than a novel of fairly high merit may be 
expected to. 

d. Brunetiere has laid his finger upon a peculiarity of 
the short story which unfits it for sermonizing. He says 
— and correctly — that it does not deal with social prob- 
lems. Its canvas is too small; or, to change the figure, 
it moves so rapidly that it touches only the high spots. 
But every problem worth preaching about must sound 
the deeps. It is a problem because there are two or more 
sides to it, because it demands hard thinking, and because 
many people have not thought it out. Now the author 
who wishes to persuade his readers, say, that socialism 
is the wisest course, or that divorce should be unrestricted, 
must develop his entire argument in dramatic form.^ 
But for this the short story has no space. At best, it 
can give a picture which will suggest the author's view. 
Van Dyke's recent Half -Told Tale entitled Stronghold 1 
does this very prettily. It deals with the most intricate 

1 Scribner's, April, 1912. 



WHAT IS A SHORT STORY? 17 

and obscure of questions, the question as to the wisdom 
of social violence. It moves you, it rings true, yet 
it does not quite convince; and no fiction short of a thick 
book could, having that problem to wrestle with. Just 
because the short story presents no more than one little 
scene, one idea, one pro or contra, it is an ill weapon for 
a man with a mission, which calls into play the heavy 
artillery of argument and long-drawn-out history. 

5. The purpose of this book. Those students who write 
for culture should do so with the highest ideals of fictional 
art before them; and those who write for profit should 
know, in addition, all the tricks of the trade. Therefore 
this volume falls into two parts. Its first and more im- 
portant aim is to describe the perfect story and the devices 
for attaining perfection. In arraying these I am well 
aware that not one student in a thousand can manage all 
of them. Even a master often fails with some. But 
they are, none the less, the ideals and guiding principles. 
In the short second half of the book the commercial aspect 
of authorship is considered. There we shall take exception 
to some of those artistic laws, but only because the reading 
public is less interested in perfect art than in simple enter- 
tainment. In recognizing this fact, we do not fall into any 
contradiction. Nor do we alter the ideals of fiction. We 
only admit the indisputable fact that purposes shape 
ideals, and that the purpose of the artist is not identical 
with the purpose of the entertainer. All pure art is enter- 
taining, but not all entertaining is pure art. The demands 
of entertainment are broader and looser than those of 
flawless fiction. 



PART I: THE ART 



CHAPTER I— WHAT IS A SHORT STORY 

1. The double ideal. In loose popular usage, every 
story that is short is a short story, and a story is any narra- 
tive. Allegory, anecdote, report and tale are regarded as 
so many varieties of short story. But among artists and 
critics there prevails a narrower conception which is amply 
justified by the history of modern fiction. According to 
them, the short story is the most highly specialized 
brand of narrative, if not of prose generally. Now, 
what quality peculiarizes it so? Its double ideal. 

The short story ideal is a fusion of two artistic ideals, the 
one American, the other French. Foe best expressed the 
former, and Maupassant the latter. The American ideal is 
f The Single Effect.' The French ideal is the Dramatic Effect. 
The Short Story is therefore a narrative drama 
with a single effect. 

2. What the single effect is. In his essay on Hawthorne's 
tales, Poe points out that the 'brief tale' is not a work of 
art unless it produces a unified impression upon the reader. 

A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. If 
wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate 
his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate 
care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, 
he then invents such incidents — he then combines such 
events as may best aid him in establishing this precon- 
ceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the 
out-bringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first 
step. In the whole composition there should be no word 
written of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not 
to the one pre-established design. As by such means, 
with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted 

21 



22 SHORT STORY WRITING 

which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it 
with a kindred art a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The 
idea of the tale has been presented unblemished, because 
undisturbed; and this is an end unattainable by the 
novel. Undue brevity is just as exceptionable here as 
in the poem, but undue length is yet more to be avoided. 1 

This ideal was first attained by Poe. His stories 
bear little or no resemblance to the tales of earlier writers. 
Compare, if you will, The Fall of the House of Usher 
with any of the stories in The Arabian Nights, and you 
will instantly discern the novelty of the American writer. 
Charming the tales of Scheherazade are, but in a dif- 
ferent way. Whatever they do, they do not produce a 
single emotional effect. Within each tale the reader is 
transported, as on the magic carpet of Prince Houssain, 
from grim tragedy to farce, from farce to tedious the- 
ological disquisitions on some sura of the Koran, and 
thence to a page of puns or something else. He is watch- 
ing literary vaudeville, and the spectacle has all the 
merits and defects of the theatrical article. This variega- 
tion is, of course, much more pronounced in medieval 
fiction than in modern; but it pervades the latter down 
to the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Before 
then, it is only in rare specimens that we find anything 
like the unity of impression which Poe produces. 

Insofar as technique is concerned, the single effect is 
more fundamental than the dramatic effect. It deter- 
mines much more profoundly the structure of the short 
story. Furthermore, it is, one might say, an absolute 
ideal, whereas the dramatic is relative to the particular 
material of each plot. For instance, a weak dramatic 
quality will not ruin a story, provided some one emotion 
or some one idea is vividly played upon; but, conversely, 
there is no hope for a story, however dramatic, if it leaves 
1 Graham's Magazine, May, 1835. 



WHAT IS A SHORT STORY? 23 

you with either no definite impression at all or else with 
several in conflict or unrelated. The majority of current 
productions well illustrate this rule. Few indeed are the 
strong dramatic stories, but there are many others — 
mostly character sketches, mystery tales, and surprises — 
which give the reader something to laugh at, something 
to cry over, something to rage at, or something to think 
about. In short, they affect him in a distinct and single 
manner; and it is just this unity of impression which en- 
ables them to run the editorial gantlet. There is a pretty 
clear reason for this, and it will appear slowly in the course 
of the technical analysis upon which we shall soon be 
launched. 

3. What dramatic narrative is. The second constit- 
uent ideal, the French, is much less easily defined. The 
trouble with it is that the dramatic quality to which 
it aspires is somewhat nebulous. An over-simplified 
statement of it appears in Matthews' remark, cited 
above, that the short story fulfils the three false unities 
of the French classic drama: "It shows one action, in 
one place, on one day. A Short story deals with a single 
character, a single event, a single emotion, or the series 
of emotions called forth by a single situation." Were 
we to take this literally, we should find scarcely a story 
even approximating the standard. Look, for instance, 
at the more familiar works of the chief exponent of the 
dramatic story, Maupassant. The Horla has two char- 
acters dominant and two emotions, mystery and horror. 
There is no one event, though there is a single complica- 
tion. The Necklace, one of the flawless contes, covers a 
period of ten years and depends absolutely upon the inter- 
play of two emotions, false pride and honor, the former 
controlling the wife and the latter the husband. In like 
manner Vain Beauty scorns the false dramatic unities; 
and so too does every other superior conte with the possible 



24 SHORT STORY WRITING 

exception of Moonlight, and A Coward. Were we to 
inspect the stories of other authors, we should find a 
still less pious observance of the alleged rule. 

Nevertheless, nearly all story writers since Poe show 
unmistakable signs of following some dramatic ideal. 
And the most conspicuous evidence of this is that their 
stories have plots. Herein they differ sharply from Poe's 
tales, few of which exhibit more than a shred of that sort 
of complication. If, now, we can describe the essence 
of a plot, we shall understand the ideal of drama. This 
description must now be attempted. 

A plot is a climactic series of events each of which both 
determines and is determined by the characters involved. 

The student will please observe that the determination 
here spoken of is reciprocal. This fact is the significant 
one. If the determination is one-sided, there results no 
plot, in the strict dramatic sense. 

Thus, suppose the events shaped the destiny of the char- 
acter but were not themselves directed by him; the hero 
would then be little more than the passive victim of cir- 
cumstances, and the story would take on the loose vesture 
of flowing adventure, like the yarns of Sinbad, the Sailor. 
Sinbad, you remember, set forth on his first voyage to 
repair his squandered fortunes. This initial act was 'in 
character', for it was specifically determined by the great 
traveler's repentance and new desires. His plight, his 
bitter thoughts of prodigalities past, and his resolve to lead 
a saner life directly precipitated his embarking. Here 
then is genuine drama. But there is no more of it. All 
that befell him afterward was not of his making. It was 
pure chance that his ship came upon a dead calm near a 
pleasant little island, and that he went ashore. It was 
pure chance that the island turned out to be the back of a 
leviathan, and that the monster dove to the bottom of the 
sea, ere his visitors regained their sloop. It was pure 



WHAT IS A SHORT STORY? 25 

chance that Sinbad, afloat on a fragment of wreckage, 
was driven by a rising gale to an island, and that the 
grooms of the maharajah, who rescued him, were still 
near by, pasturing the royal stud. And so forever his 
haps and mishaps ran on, beyond the control of his 
wishes and skill, indifferent to his virtues. 

Now, a skilful writer might weave such adventures 
so deftly that they would hang together like a well- 
fashioned garment. But mere coherence would not 
elevate them to the texture of a drama. At best, it 
could only achieve that other virtue of the story, namely 
the single effect. To Poe this result seemed quite enough. 
Indeed, he believed it constituted a plot. In his essay 
on American drama he says: 

A mere succession of incidents, even the most spirited, 
will no more constitute' a plot than a multiplication of 
zeros, even the most infinite, will result in the production 
of a unit. This all will admit — but few trouble them- 
selves to think further. The common notion seems to 
.be in favor of mere complexity; but a plot, properly under- 
stood, is perfect only inasmuch as we shall find ourselves 
unable to detach from it or disarrange any single incident 
involved, without destruction to the mass. This we 
say is the point of perfection — a point never yet attained, 
but not on that account unattainable. Practically, 
we may consider a plot as of high excellence when no one 
of its component parts shall be susceptible of removal 
without detriment to the whole. 

Now, this describes a feature of the perfect drama; 
but the trouble is that it does the same for the mystery 
story like The Gold Bug and for the well-constructed 
allegory and, in general, for any narrative which aims to 
bring out one idea or to lead up to one important scene. 
Indeed, what Poe here touches is not the nature of a plot 
but a virtue of well-knit discourse. His remarks apply 



26 SHORT STORY WRITING 

perfectly to the 'plot' of a geometrical demonstration 
or any other deductive argument. 

Let us now make the opposite supposition; namely, 
' that we have a plot when we have fashioned a series of 
events that grow entirely out of the central character. 
This is W. D. Howells' belief. About it we may ask 
several questions. First, do many writers accept it as a 
dramatic ideal? Secondly, do they live up to it in their 
'own writings? Thirdly, does it help define the class of 
existent fiction which critics recognize to be short stories? 
And, if not, why not? 

The first query finds an affirmative answer. Mau- 
passant, Howells, Henry James, Edith Wharton and 
many others strive to compose stories in which the 
heroes and heroines make everything happen out of their 
own inner natures. But — touching now the second 
question — these authors constantly allow their char- 
acters to be moulded by circumstances. Assuredly 
their men and women grow, shift, decay, and take on 
new forms under the stress of chance. If they are selfish 
at the outset, they end generously. If they begin honest, 
they finish as hypocrites. 

In Howells' The Magic of a Voice, for example, the entire 
plot turns upon Langbourne's lucky discovery of the circu- 
lar letter and the still luckier presence of Barbara's home 
address on the envelope. How then can Howells here de- 
fend his own dictum that in a true plot "the man does not 
result from the things he does, but the things he does result 
from the man"? It might be said that Langbourne's 
going into the girl's room at the hotel after she had vacated 
it grew out of his character; and, as he found the letter 
on the floor of the room, this latter event sprang from his 
character. But this reasoning is sophistical. It is a 
variety of the 'fallacy of accident', as logicians say. 
For it was not Langbourne's wish to find the lost article 



WHAT IS A SHORT STORY? 27 

that set the story going; it was the actual discovery of 
it. Now, the wish and the ensuing act came from his 
character, no doubt. But the presence of the circular 
did not. It was as accidental as the direction of the wind 
outside the hotel. So far as his passionate curiosity about 
the girl was concerned, he might have found nothing in 
her room. 

But we need not insist too zealously upon this distinc- 
tion. For the issue does not turn upon anybody's 
notion of what a plot is, but rather upon what is dramatic 
in a plot. What we vaguely call plot and discern in the 
modern short story is the dramatic quality, and it is 
only because we hope to discover it in plots that we 
analyze the latter. Now Howells may be right insofar 
as he means that the reader's interest always centres 
upon the hero's ingenuity and daring in getting the better 
of circumstances, or upon his cowardice or villainy or 
dulness or, in general, upon his way of managing affairs. 
But this managing is only one of two indispensable factors 
in drama. Pure, abstract character, however triumphant 
and glorious, cannot spin drama out of itself. A mer- 
chant dictating a business letter to a docile and competent 
stenographer is making things happen according to his 
own will and nature. But the act is not dramatic. A 
citizen refusing to buy a red cravat because his wife dis- 
likes the hue is displaying character. But the deed, 
unqualified by certain unforeseen, uncontrolled complica- 
tions and consequences, is not dramatic. It could not 
be told appropriately in a short story unless it drove the 
uxorious hero into a fatal quarrel with a haberdashing 
desperado, or led his wife to despise him for his softness 
and to run away from him. In other words, there 
must be a climax, an event remarkable in some respect; 
and something must happen to the character as a 
result of something which he has done; and, as 



28 SHORT "STORY WRITING 

Howells wishes, the character must express himself in 
the episodes. 

In other words, every story whose excellence is gen- 
erally admitted is more than a picture of character, 
more than a good complication, more than a fragment of 
biography, and more than an exciting episode. It is all 
these together, and in it they are so arranged that the 
reader is surprised by what happens to the hero, and 
thrilled by what the hero does to each situation. This 
thrill is the thrill of drama, only if the hero somehow 
exhibits his human nature by conduct in a crisis. There 
may be as many dramatic qualities as there are traits of 
human nature and typical crises; between the blackest, 
unrelieved tragedy and the frothiest farce the spectrum 
is long. But all the shades in it have this common 
characteristic, namely, conduct in a crisis. And this is 
the second constituent ideal of the modern short story, 
the ideal fostered in France and now generally accepted. 
We shall soon have much to say about its peculiarities. 

4. What the single effect involves. 

We have now to ask whether the first ideal demands 
any special structure or material. It does not. It may be 
gained in a variety of ways, the two basic types of which are: 

a. Building the story around a theme. 

b. Emphasizing one or more of the three factors in the 
dramatic narrative. 

a. Thematic development. The theme can best be 
described in contrast with the plot and the setting, with 
which it blends so deftly in the finished work that the 
casual reader seldom distinguishes them. The term 
'theme', is widely employed in two senses. Its com- 
moner meaning is 'a topic, a subject of discourse'. So 
used, it leads us to say, for example, that the fatal panic 
of Viscount de Signoles is the theme of Maupassant's 
little masterpiece, A Coward; and that the softening of 



WHAT IS A SHORT STORY? 29 

the Abb^ Marignan's heart toward beauty and love is the 
theme of Moonlight Over against this connotation 
stands the more technical one^ which is the ' underlying 
idea'. The looser first meaning is TItne~^ore*~tEan a 
rough indication of the dramatic narrative as a whole; 
it tells what happens. But the second meaning is the 
import of what happens. It is the idea of which the 
narrative is the dramatic expression. It bears the same 
relation to the narrative that the first four notes of 
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony bear to the world of 
melody which follows them. Out of this short motif 
the entire symphony grows; h expresses the full esthetic 
value of the simple combination. So too with the 
thematic story; it dramatically amplifies a proposition. 
Often it really is, and arrays it has at least the air of be- 
ing, an empirical proof of the proposition. The writer's 
interest centres upon the law or other truth, not upon 
the persons or episodes of the story. He tells the 
story for the sake of the truth it drives home, rather 
than for the poignancy or humor or sweetness of its 
happenings. 

Consider O. Henry's powerful, somewhat freakishly 
constructed romance, A Municipal Report. O. Henry 
undertakes to show that Frank Norris didn't know what 
he was talking about when he wrote: "Fancy a novel 
about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville, Tennes- 
see! There are just three big cities in the United States 
which are ' story cities' — New York, of course, New 
Orleans, and, best of all, San Francisco." O. Henry knew 
this was libellous nonsense. He knew the world too well 
to be deceived into thinking that times and places give 
life and color to the deeds of mankind. " It is a rash one", 
he protested, "who will lay his finger on the map and 
say: 'In this town there can be no romance — what could 
happen here?'" And by way of proof he wrote about 



30 SHORT STORY WRITING 

Azalea Adair, of eight-sixty-one Jessamine Street, Nash- 
ville; and he demolished Norris' juvenile dictum. 

The theme of A Municipal Report is: ' Romance is the 
slave of neither times nor places.' The plot is the 
dramatic instance illustrating this proposition. It is 
the climactic series of happening which exhibits the gen- 
eral law asserted in the theme. Now, just as in a natural 
science, so too in the fictionist's domain; any one of an 
infinite multitude of events suffices to demonstrate a law. 
Any star in the sky, any pebble under foot, any falling 
apple establishes the principle of gravitation. Like- 
wise, to have affirmed his theme, 0. Henry might have 
cited the strange adventures of Amy Smith, of Scranton, 
Pa.; or what befell Count Vaurien, the spy of Napoleon; 
or the trouble that descended upon Herr Spitz, collector 
of the port of Munich; or the deeds of Uk-Tuk, chief of 
the Mu-ri, in the forgotten days of the Stone Hammer. 
Again, to prove that Romance laughs at geographers, he 
might have played upon innumerable complications, 
now of French folly, now of big business in Bolivia, now 
of racial rows in Russia, now of rate wars in ancient 
Rome. And with this theme, so with nearly all others. 
Each may be adequately exhibited in any one of an 
innumerable host of plots. And this fact marks one of 
the differences between theme and plot. 

A similar contrast may be drawn between plot and 
setting. Given one set of people displaying opinions 
and desires which bring about the dramatic complica- 
tion, and you may vary the geographical details with 
considerable freedom. Not every change in these brings 
with it a modification of the dramatic quality, still less 
of the theme. A brave fireman will rescue a cripple from 
a burning building, be the building a soap factory or a 
Methodist church, be it in Shanghai or Kalamazoo. 
There are thus two degrees of elasticity in the handling 



WHAT IS A SHORT STORY? 31 

of a theme: first, the theme may be depicted in many- 
plots; and, secondly, each plot may be developed in many 
settings. 1 

It must now be evident that the thematic story re- 
sembles the didactic. And we must designate their rela- 
I tion closely. 

The thematic story differs from the didactic, not in the 
I nature of its theme nor in the clearness of the dramatic 
\proof of the theme, but in the single effect produced. 

In the thematic story the dramatic narrative is stronger 
tyian the pure theme. In the didactic story the pure theme 
u stronger than the dramatic narrative. 

The adjective, ' stronger', here means ' stronger in 
effect'. It does not mean more significant or more moral; 
it refers only to the superior intensity of the reader's 
impression. Were a critic to classify stories exclusively 
with respect to their material, he could discern no dif- 
ference between the types we have just distinguished. 
Exactly the same themes and the identical characters, 
complications, and setting may be made to yield either 
variety. 

Suppose you were to write about the sinking of the 
Titanic and wished to show that heroism is not a rare and 
difficult act which only a few men of tremendous will 
power and lofty ideals can perform, but is, on the con- 
trary, a common, natural, and easy deed. You might 
tell the whole story without mentioning this theme, 
even indirectly. There might be no more than a pic- 
ture of the little bell boys, puffing cigarettes in the dining 
room, while the stricken vessel slowly tilted on end; or of 

1 The contrast between plot and setting may suggest that these 
factors are generically different. This would be a serious confusion. 
The setting is a part of the plot: It is, however, a peculiar part 
in that it is essential and yet not very influential in coloring the 
dramatic factors. 



32 SHORT STORY WRITING 

the stokers standing knee-deep in icy water; or of the 
travelers playing poker in the smoking room until the 
cards slipped off the tipping table. And yet the reader 
would carry away the theme as surely as if you had 
bellowed it text-wise into his ears; and the story would 
be thematic. On the other hand, you might begin with 
the remark that men are wont to think of heroes as 
towering, solitary figures, but that this is false. Then 
you might tell your story, arranging the incidents solely 
with an eye to the proof. In so doing, you would perhaps 
suppress much that might have heightened the dramatic 
effect. You might drop into colorless reporting, with 
the result that, through it all, your reader would not be 
absorbed in the episodes but would be thinking of what 
you sought to establish. Or else the story might run 
along smoothly without this effect up to the very close; 
and there its climax might be so weak that the reader 
would slip instantly from it to the theme. In this case 
your story would be didactic. 

Many stories, namely, those whose themes are not 
perceptibly stronger nor weaker than their cjramatic 
development, cannot be classified under either head, ex- 
cept by some arbitrary ruling. There is little doubt 
that Hawthorne intended The Birthmark to be didactic, 
yet, to many readers, the moral goes lost behind the 
tragedy of Aylmer and Georgiana. Poe, on the other 
hand, probably had no desire to preach when he wrote 
William Wilson; but this story may readily be experi- 
enced as a fictional sermon; for the drama in it is not 
terrific, while the theme is crystal-clear. Again, 0. Henry's 
stories frequently purport to be didactic, in a light- 
hearted way, but almost always the whimsical drama 
gets the better of the preacher; and the reader is left 
wondering whether the yarn was spun for the sake of the 
moral, or the moral for the yarn. 



WHAT IS A SHORT STORY? 33 

The single effect of the didactic story is likely to be 
sharp but not emotional. Its natural quality is in- 
tellectual. It is therefore a difficult species, and most 
attempts at it fail miserably. The stories which succeed 
in influencing the public most strongly are not the didactic 
but most often the thematic. And anybody who has 
tried to write both kinds knows why this is so; it is be- 
cause dramatic narrative is most easily managed when 
one's attention is concentrated upon the drama itself, 
and further because most well told tales display their own 
moral unaided. The more you try to help a story preach, 
the more help it needs. 

b. Emphatic development Every narrative contains 
Jihree basic factors which enter, in widely varying degrees, 
into the structure and qualify the total impression. 
They are: 
i. Character. 

ii. Complication, 

iii. Setting. 
i. Character. There cannot be a dramatic situation 
without human beings. The only apparent exception is 
the story with an animal hero. But even here it is a 
human trait which is read into the creature and made to 
sustain the narrative. 

ii. Complication. This includes the entanglements of 
persons and circumstances which make the plot. The 
villain's designs against the poor working girl, the old 
man's discovery that his son has betrayed him, the love of 
two men for the same girl, the rumor of hidden treasure 
that sends buccaneers racing across the brine, — these 
are meagre samples of the limitless congregation of 
complicating factors. 

iii. Setting. Broadly speaking, the place where the 
plot unfolds is the story's setting; and all the furniture 
of the place belongs thereunto. The hilltop on which 



34 SHORT STORY WRITING 

the beacon fires are lighted, the vale where the con- 
spirators meet at midnight, the battered oaken chest that 
holds the ciphered will of the dead duke — of such stuff, 
geographical and otherwise, are settings made. 

Now, each 'story germ' (that is, the vague outline of 
the central complication) may assume a variety of forms, 
each the outgrowth of some slight change in the action or 
characters or situation. Furthermore, one variation 
demands a peculiarly rich development of some character 
trait, while another stresses the mystery or the horror or 
the charm of the plot, and a third comes to its own only 
if the environment is minutely drawn. 

These three directions of emphasis result in three funda- 
mental types of story. The single effect is produced, now 
in character drawing, now in the dramatic intensity of the 
plot, and ?ww in the sensuous quality of the setting. And 
the resulting types are commonly called, respectively, 

1. The character story. 

2. The complication story. 

3. The atmosphere story. 

These are the fundamental types, but not the only 
ones. Some plots not only allow but even necessitate 
the intensification of some two of the three factors, and 
some few call for the almost equal development of all 
three. Hence four more types, all compound, are 
possible: 

4. The character-complication story. 

5. The character-atmosphere story. 

6. The complication-atmosphere story. 

7. The three-phase story. 

Two warnings must at once be issued to the student. 
The first is that he must not suppose intensification of 
one factor to involve the total suppression of the others* 
A character story is by no means one without plot and 
atmosphere; that would be no genuine story at all, but 






WHAT IS A SHORT STORY? 35 

only a character sketch or an anecdote. You will find 
these two types illustrated in Galsworthy's volume, 
A Motley; the bitter little draught of life called Once 
More is a model character story, while A Portrait is a 
character sketch. And now the second warning: the 
seven types above are not so many ideals toward which 
any given theme or plot might be driven, as the writer 
chooses. They are different forms which particular 
themes and plots impose upon the well modelled story. 
You cannot shape a complete plot or theme, now into 
the mold of a character story, now into that of an at- 
mosphere story, as your fancy pleases. The mature cast 
of a story lies largely predestined in the plot or theme. 
There is, to be sure, a considerable elasticity of detail 
in its outworking and on rare occasions enough to make 
it eligible to either of two forms. Atmosphere, for 
example, can often be intensified to suit one's taste. 
Nevertheless, the rule holds broadly, as the student will 
learn by analyzing two extreme specimens, such as 
Henry James' The Turn of the Screw and O. Henry's 
The Furnished Room. 

Here are two ghost stories as far apart as the poles in 
every detail and in every essential, except that both 
touch the cold hem of the supernatural. The Turn of 
the Screw is a three-phase story. The governess's loyalty, 
daring and love shape the course of events dramatically — 
and there you have a character story. The mysterious 
power which the two evil spirits exercise over the un- 
happy children, and the strange trickeries of the children, 
and the incomprehensible deaths of former employees at 
Bly all make it a story of terrific complication. And, 
finally, the awful spectres, the face at the window, the 
visions across the lake, the encounters on the stairs — 
all these are as sudden gusts out of a deep, black cave, 
freezing cold; they sweep through the whole story— and 



36 SHORT STORY WRITING 

there you have the intensely sensuous development of the 
setting which makes an atmosphere story. The Fur- 
nished Room, on the other hand, is a simple complica- 
tion story, enriched with many a touch of atmosphere, 
but not deriving its strength from such. The ghost 
is very different from the unspeakable Quint in James* 
story. Only a whiff of perfume, nothing more! Such 
a very sweet, insubstantial spectre, and so shy withal, 
that you quite forget her in the midst of the simple 
pathos of the complication. 

Now let the student try to think of James developing 
his plot as a simple complication story with the strong 
but accessory tinges of atmosphere such as The Fur- 
nished Room exhibits. The utter impossibility appears 
in a minute. James would have to throw away half his 
idea, to do that. The vital part played by the governess 
would go by the board; and with it would go the soul 
of the story, for the whole tragedy is born of her stubborn 
will. And now reverse the problem; attempt to expand 
the other story into a three-phase one. It cannot be ac- 
complished, inasmuch as there is nothing for either lover 
to do, by force of character; no crisis to fight through, 
no enemies to overcome, no moral issue to settle, but only 
the pathetic little coincidence of the boy's chancing upon 
the very room where his lost sweetheart had just died, 
and then the unearthly whiff of mignonette. That 
is the story! 1 

5. Final classification of story types. The foregoing 
analysis discloses two species of stories, each of which is 

1 This whole question has nothing to do with that of an author's 
style. We are not asking whether O . Henry could have written Henry 
James' story, and James contrived O. Henry's. Nor are we asking 
whether James would have changed O. Henry's plot, had he chosen 
it. Our question has to do with structural possibilities of the 
story material. These are much deeper than individual tastes 
and styles. 



The Short Story - 



WHAT IS A SHORT STORY? 37 

distinguished by the direction in which its single effect 
arises. The following scheme orders them and their 
minor varieties: 

Thematic 
Variation: Didactic. 

Emphatic: 

3 pure sub-types: 
Character. 
Complication. 
Atmosphere. 

4 complex variations: 
combinations of the above 8. 

These distinctions, of course, are much clearer in this 
table than in real life. The two main species especially 
often blur before the reader's eyes; but this is due to a 
peculiarity of the human mind, not to a flaw in our 
analysis. The difference between the thematic and 
the emphatic story is as great as the difference between 
proving that all men are liars and saying so vehemently. 
But it is no greater. Genuine in reason, it often dwindles 
to the vanishing point in practice, thanks to the fact that 
most people cannot easily hold proof apart from emphasis. 
You may persuade them occasionally with rigorous dem- 
onstration, but most often by uttering your point many, 
many times with polite fervor and a pleasing variety of 
phrase. This is the device of old-fashioned politics, new- 
fashioned advertising, agreeable conversation, and much 
excellent instructive fiction. The vivid picture becomes 
the proved theme. Hence the well written emphatic 
story is with difficulty marked off from the genuine the- 
matic story. But this fact does not reduce the two types 
to one; it only hides their profound difference. 

6. How other forms of brief fiction differ from the short 
story. Our definition demarcates the short story quite 



38 ' SHORT STORY WRITING 

sharply, and yet without limiting the type mechanically, 
as all other definitions of it do. (1) The anecdote, 
episode, report, sketch, and tale need not be dramatic 
and need not produce a single effect. Thus they are 
doubly distinguished from the short story. (2) The 
novelette is better, if dramatic; but it is under no com- 
pulsion to be so. And likewise with its unity of im- 
pression. (3) The allegory, the fable, and the puzzle 
story need not be dramatic, but they must produce the 
single effect. For the purpose of the allegory is to 
depict an analogy, and so the analogical effect must be 
supreme and undisturbed. The aim of the fable is to 
point a moral. And the ideal of the puzzle story (such 
as Poe's Gold Bug or the ordinary detective story) is, 
forsooth, to puzzle you; and it would fail were it to 
turn you from the mystery to the beauty of the charac- 
ters, to some doctrinal issue or to the charm of the 
diction. (4) The one-act play must, of course, be dra- 
matic; and it is more successful, if it produces a single 
effect. But it is not narrative; and so,feven when it 
produces a single effect, the latter is not literary but 
theatrical and demands staging and acting to bring out 
its proper values. Nevertheless, the one-act play is the 
next of kin to the short story; for it differs from the latter 
less in its ideals and purposes than in its medium of ex- 
pression. 

Illustrations. (1) Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle 
is commonly counted with the short stories. But this is 
a mistake. It possesses no quality of the species, but only 
some external, mechanical, and largely accidental features. 
It has one central character, it turns around one pre- 
dominating incident, it is fantastic, and the number of 
its words falls within the orthodox limit set by the business 
managers of our magazines. But with these non-essen- 
tials its likeness to the type ends. There is not a trace of 



WHAT IS A SHORT STORY? 39 

dramatic action in it, though the opportunities for it are 
rnahyT The tale falls into three parts; the first depicting 
Rip's character and his family troubles; the second 
telling of his encounter with Hendrick Hudson and his 
crew; and the third recounting the adventures that fol- 
lowed Rip's long sleep. Now, in none of these is it the 
amiable old loafer's character (or lack of character, if you 
will) that shapes the course of events. The nearest 
approach to such dramatic knitting is made in that 
moment when Rip, smarting under the tongue-lashings 
of Dame Van Winkle, slunk off with dog and gun into 
the peace of the woods. But did he resolve to wander 
far, or to lose himself, or to stay away until after night- 
fall? No. He "unconsciously scrambled to one of the 
highest parts of the Kaatskill mountains." Unconsciously! 
With that word the very thought of drama vanishes. 
Rip simply blundered forth upon an adventure, as Sinbad 
the Sailor did. And so forth to the end, always a care- 
free victim of circumstances. 

Look now to the impression created. Can you say 
that it is single? I, for one, cannot. On the contrary 
one of the most precious charms of the tale is its exquisite 
modulation. Few specimens of brief fiction can match 
the almost musical quality of its transitions from one 
emotional key to another. It melts from pastoral to 
comic, from comic to weird, from weird to pathetic, 
from pathetic to placid, always with grace and smooth- 
ness. And when the last word has been read, one listener 
may dwell upon Dame Van Winkle's temper, another 
may linger over the ghostly bowlers, a third laugh at 
Rip, and a fourth marvel at the twenty-year slumber. 
Ask for the one idea, the single sentiment which the 
tale embodies, and none can say. In this uncertainty 
we find the final proof that it is a tale and not a short 
story. 



40 SHORT STORY WRITING 

(2) The Aspern Papers, by Henry James, is a typical 
novelette. It verges toward the novel in length, in the 
multiplicity of its interests, and in the fulness of its 
delineations. As we shall soon see, the short story 
cannot develop more than one character trait, without 
marring its single effect (either by becoming too long 
or else arousing interest in several conflicting sides of the 
hero's nature). But, in The Aspern Papers, at least 
five character traits are quite elaborately pictured 
and these reside not in one person, but in three, each 
of whom alternately claims our full interest, if not our 
sympathies. In short, the situation resembles real life 
much more than that of any short story can hope to. 
It is intricate, and we, its spectators, are not held by 
some single theme or interest so much as by the battle 
of many natures and aspirations. Loyalty to a long- 
dead lover, hatred of publicity in private matters, a 
belated affection, family pride, and the collector's mania 
struggle, now desperately, now comically, with one an- 
other; and the reader sees the minutest details of their 
encounters. All of which is plainly impossible in a 
short story. 

(3) The allegory, the fable, and the puzzle story are 
so obviously unrestricted by dramatic considerations 
that no analysis of specimens is called for here. The 
first two types commonly do nothing more than dress 
up a single incident, regardless of character and com- 
plication. Only that much is developed which is de- 
manded for illustrating the moral or sharpening the 
simile. Read any of iEsop's fables or the parables of 
the New Testament; and you will find this true. 

The puzzle story is frequently overlaid with at least 
the semblance of dramatic action; and, when it is, it is 
not easily held apart from the genuine short story. Not 
a few excellent detective stories present this difficulty. 



WHAT IS A SHORT STORY? 41 

The Purloined Letter, by Poe, does so; the court intrigue 
out of which the theft grows is thoroughly dramatic, 
and Poe plays on it cleverly throughout the opening 

movement. The minister D- , ambitious to gain 

control over an illustrious personage, chances to see a 
compromising letter on the illustrious personage's table, 
and steals it. Here is a situation which might naturally 
work out through the characters in it. The casual 
reader, sensing this, may fancy he has a dramatic story 
before him. But he has not. For this potentially dra- 
matic situation has nothing to do with Dupin's discovery 
of the letter. It is the minister's diabolical ingenuity 
that generates the mystery; he hides the letter where 
the shrewdest detectives cannot find it. It is not his 
ambition, still less his dramatic relation to the illustrious 
personage, that counts in the central problem of the 
story. 

But The Purloined Letter — and with it many mystery 
stories — does fulfil the American ideal pretty well. It 
produces a single effect. As this was all that Poe sought, 
it would be absurd to say the work is imperfect. One 
might as well say that a street sign is imperfect because 
it does not possess the qualities of a public oration. 

(4) Kipling, Howells and Anthony Hope show us 
how close the one-act play is to the short story. The Dolly 
Dialogues often leave you in doubt as to whether you 
are reading drama or story. The Hill of Illusion, by 
Kipling, on the other hand, though neither drama nor 
story, is a thing between. And many curtain raisers might 
be put straight over into prose and sold to magazines. 
^All of which shows that the only decisive difference be- 
tween the species is in the form of presentation. The 
one-act play must be all action, all obvious, and all 
visible to the dullest eye. But not so with the short 
story; it may be full of contemplations, talk, and mean- 



42 SHORT STORY WRITING 

ings that hide between the lines. Hence, while every 
one-act play may be translated into a story without 
mutilation, not every story can be dramatized without 
important changes of detail. 

7. The short story cannot be defined in terms of its specific 
material nor by its mechanical form. Many attempts 
have been made to designate the constituent stuff and 
the irreducible pattern of the short story. But all of 
them come to grief. For the short story, as we have 
seen, is intrinsically an effect; and, being such, that 
which produces it is infinitely various, even as with all 
other effects. If you wish to produce a bright red light 
you may do so with this or that chemical; or you may use 
electricity; or you may generate a white light and sur- 
round it with red glass or red celluloid or any of a thousand 
other things. It happens, of course, that some of these 
devices are much cheaper and simpler than others; 
and so, using them exclusively, we come to regard them 
as the only ones in existence. But this belief is a prag- 
matic fiction. So too is the usual recipe for the short 
story. 

One of the most accurate of this sort is Esenwein's, 1 
which sums up all previous formulas. The short story, 
according to him, "is marked by seven characteristics: 
1. A single predominating character; 2. a single pre- 
eminent incident; 3. imagination; 4. plot; 5. compression; 
6. organization; and 7. unity of impression." Now, 
the first three of these designate the content of the story 
(imagination here means fantasy). And it is not diffi- 
cult to observe that none of them is absolutely needed. 
Not even in stories which aim exclusively at the single 
effect do we regularly find either the single predominant 
character or the single preeminent incident. To recur 
to the ever-illuminating Poe, William Wilson has two 

1 Writing the Short Story, 30. 



WHAT IS A SHORT STORY? 43 

equally important characters and no central incident. 
The Pit and the Pendulum has the single character, 
but again there is no one event that stands out above 
all others — unless you call the whole series of tortures in 
the pit one happening! (Once permit that trick of 
counting, however, and all distinctions evaporate.) 
Turn now to dramatic stories. Kipling's Beyond the 
Pale contains two lovers, of whom one might say, only 
after much sharp reasoning, that the poor little Bisesa 
is dramatically the more important. There is a climax — 
and a terrible one — but is it the 'predominating incident' 
or is Trejago's mad love-making that? 

As for imagination, there is not the slightest reason 
why a perfect story might not be fashioned from pure 
facts. Perhaps things never happened as Kipling nar- 
rates in Beyond the Pale, or in that masterpiece, Without 
Benefit of Clergy, but they might have, even down to the 
minutest item. And, because they might have, we must 
say that imagination is not essential. At most, it is 
commonly invoked. Some authors, however, pride them- 
selves upon using nothing but facts or the essence of 
fact; and in their stories you will find seldom a trace of 
fancy. There is none of it in Howells' The Pursuit of the 
Piano. There is none of it in James' penetrating char- 
acter-drama, The Liar. And there is none of it in Mrs. 
Wharton's marvelous horror, Ethan Frome. Indeed, 
few good stories of recent years reveal complications and 
turns of character that might not have been found in 
some morning's newspaper. 

Most good short stories have, to be sure, only one cen- 
tral character, one crucial incident, and at least a light 
touch of fancy. It is not strange, therefore, that these 
are usually thought to be intrinsic structures. Neverthe- 
less they are not. They are only common consequences 
of the double ideal. Other things being equal, a short 



M SHORT STORY WRITING 

story is no finer for having them. But usually it is 
easier to create a fine story by so limiting your material 
and by drawing upon your fantasies. Recall the double 
ideal, a narrative drama with single effect. Now, the 
drama calls for characters and incidents; but to produce 
with these a single effect, you must often reduce them 
to their lowest terms. As we shall see more fully in 
another chapter, human nature in its real forms presents 
so many opposing tendencies and shifts so complexly 
from moment to moment that you will seldom be al- 
lowed to depict it in its natural fulness and plasticity. 
The single effect comes not from it, but rather from 
each of its single constituent appetites, impulses, prej- 
udices, and habits. Hence your story will tend to 
portray not a character but a trait. Likewise with 
events. They, too, are likely to be intricate, and the 
impression they set up manifold and mixed. This is 
true of each episode individually, and doubly true of a 
series. In real life the number of unequivocal happen- 
ings is astoundingly small. Even a woodshed afire will 
fill one spectator with dread, another with the joy of ex- 
citement, and a third with pity for the owner; and it 
may even send one spectator around the circuit of these 
three emotions. If the reader will once more reflect 
upon Rip Van Winkle, he will see how episodes may 
hang together pleasantly and still induce a variety of 
moods. He will learn, too, why the story whose aim is 
to produce only one effect is prone to play around only 
one incident. And, finally, he will see why the writer 
must so frequently draw upon his imagination. The 
materials of real life must often be extensively tampered 
with; some of them cast out altogether, and pure inven- 
tions inserted, to the end that the whole may work but one 
witchery. Nevertheless, the single character, the single 
episode, and the touch of fancy are only incidental re- 






WHAT IS A SHORT STORY? 45 

straints. Their inevitability in some stories does not 
make them vital to the genre. 

There remain two alleged characteristics which must 
be discarded. These are compression and organization. 
The former is only one phase of the unity of impression; 
the latter is indistinguishable from the plot. As Poe 
pointed out, when contrasting the tale with the novel, 
" simple cessation in reading would, of itself, be sufficient 
to destroy the true unity of impression". 1 Hence the 
well modelled short story must admit of being read easily 
at a single sitting. Now, if the plot is intrinsically simple 
and swift, no compression is demanded. The story may 
be fully told in well under ten thousand words. To 
say that it is compressed simply because it is short in 
comparison with Vanity Fair would be about as sensible 
as to say that a man is compressed into a body much 
smaller than an elephant's. If the word means anything, 
compressing means packing something into less space 
than it naturally occupies. But the natural telling of 
any plot suited to the short story will not exceed the 
proper bounds. 

I should not insist upon this verbal nicety, had the 
laxer usage not misled many young writers into stripping 
their stories of every word which did not help to convey 
the bald meaning of the plot. Many high authorities 
have taught the writer to strike from his pages every 
phrase which is not absolutely indispensable to conveying 
his idea. It is quite in style to hold up the parables of 
the New Testament — and Biblical narrative generally — 
as models for the short story writer, and not even writers 
on story technique have raised voice against the custom. 
But protests must be made, for all such advice is deadly. 
It rests upon the fatal, all too easy confusion of rhetorical 
compression with the suppression of irrelevant matter. 

1 Loc. cit. 



46 v SHORT STORY WRITING 

The difference between these two operations may be 
illumined by a homely analogy. Consider a farmer 
baling hay. Now, in what does his act consist, if not 
simply in making a dozen wisps lie where only one lay? 
The hay he does not change at all, save in bulk. Baled, 
it is still the same timothy as before in the far-flung wind- 
rows. Still, too, is it peppered, perhaps, with burrs and 
thistles. But now let us suppose that the farmer, instead 
of baling for market, wishes to keep his hay in the mow 
for his own cattle, which love not at all the burr and the 
thistle. He picks out these weeds, for they do not fit 
in with either his idea or his cows' idea of pure food. They 
are, in short, quite irrelevant to all the purposes of normal 
bovine digestion. Therefore, to suit these purposes, the 
farmer alters the hay. He casts out his weeds. 

So with the story writer. Having penned an episode, 
he may endeavor to pack it into smaller compass, not by 
casting out anything of the plot, the setting, the char- 
acter, or the interpretation; but solely by reducing the 
verbal bulk. Thus, instead of 'the golden orb of day', he 
writes 'the sun'; and he cancels a score of relative pro- 
nouns and definite articles. On the other hand, he may 
discern something in the story idea and its outworking 
which the ideals of dramatic narrative do not demand or 
cannot tolerate. And now he does not condense; he trans- 
forms. He does not pack the old plot into smaller space 
nor sketch the hero with fewer strokes. He removes 
dramatic factors, inserts others, clarifies the depicted traits 
of human nature, intensifies the climax, and so on. And 
all this, I insist pedantically, is not compression at all, 
but rather suppression. And failure to hold the two 
operations clearly apart has precipitated many a begin- 
ning writer into disastrous errors. 

The gravest of these errors I have alluded to; it is that 
of supposing that fine dramatic effects are to be produced 



WHAT IS A SHORT STORY? 47 

by paring one's narrative language down until it becomes 
the baldest possible report of the story facts. If only I 
could use as few words as there are in the parable of the 
prodigal son — so thinks the beginner — how swift and how 
intense my dramatic action would be! Driven by this 
thought, he often abbreviates the expression of his idea 
or else cuts out minor descriptive touches. The outcome 
is a meagre report, excellent newspaper writing perhaps, 
but not dramatic narrative with a single effect. Like its 
false models, the Scriptural fables, it may score a point 
vividly, it may state an incident with fine accuracy, and 
yet be as far removed from the short story as the sonnet 
is. And the reason, more formally worded, is simply 
this : compression is a purely rhetorical operation, affecting 
only the way the story is communicated to the reader; 
but the story which is communicated is no more affected 
by that operation than it is by being translated from 
English to French. Its dramatic value and the single 
effect would remain virtually constant throughout a 
thousand widely different phrasings of the narrative. To 
produce that supreme effect of swift straightforwardness 
which most of us find in Maupassant and a score of later 
authors, you must manipulate, not words, but the people 
and the events about which you are writing. Character 
traits must be sharply isolated, circumstances ridden of 
obscurity and elaboration, and the complication rushed 
to its dramatic finish. In short, the matter of the story 
must be simple; and, being simple, it need not be com- 
pressed at all. 

When a story needs compression, you may be sure of 
one of two things: either the writer has not been telling 
his story, but has been ambling far afield; or else his 
plot is not a story plot, but of a complexity that calls for 
treatment in the form of a novelette or novel. Of course, 
if you choose to count such mistakes as short stories, then 



48 SHORT STORY WRITING 

you may say that many short stories demand compression. 
But that would be queer logic. Compression, in this 
sense, is not a characteristic of the short story, but an 
improvement of a botched specimen. 

As for the other alleged characteristic, namely, organiza- 
tion, what is it if not the relation of person to person 
and of event to event in just that manner which generates 
a dramatic complication and leads to a climax? But 
all this is what we mean by the plot. The more closely 
we study the latter, the clearer does it become that 
even the minor arrangements of dramatic material are all 
fixed by it and by the exigencies of the single effect Whether 
the lady shall enter before or after her lover has finished 
reading the fatal letter; whether the wicked millionaire 
shall trust his valet or not; whether the queen shall be 
eating bread and honey in the parlor or in the kitchen — 
all such questions have to do solely with the dramatic 
'entanglement and the unified impression. Apart from 
them there is no organizing to be done. 

In conclusion, then, contrary to all the literary formal- 
ists, a short story may have as many characters in action 
as the writer can handle, while producing his single 
effect. It may involve as many events as he is disposed 
to incorporate, provided only he lives up to the double 
ideal. And there is no style forbidden him, so long as 
he uses it to aid rather than to thwart that same ideal. 
In spite of this freedom, he will generally deal with 
one only trait and one episode. But let him not mistake 
these common formal limits for his ideal. Such a con- 
fusion is fatal, wherever ideals are involved. In morals, 
it leads to conventionality. And it reduces art to crass 
mechanics. 



EXERCISES 49 



Exercises 

Which of the following works are (1) dramatic but 
without a unity of impression, (2) undramatic but with 
the single effect, (3) both dramatic and with the single 
effect, and (4) lacking both qualities? Indicate, as 
precisely as you can, the central idea and the emotional 
quality of each story. 

Poe, E. V.— Hop Frog. 
Balzac, Honore — A Seashore Drama. 
— La Grande Breteche. 
Maupassant, Guy de — The Piece of String. 

— Little Soldier. 
Coppee, Francois — The Substitute. 

— My Friend Meurtrier. 
Daudet, Alphonse — The Siege of Berlin. 
Stevenson, R. L. — Ollala. 

— Markheim,. 
Kipling, Rudyard — At the End of the Passage. 

—They. 
Wharton, Edith—The Bolted Door. 
Dyar, Muriel C. — The Crime in Jedidiah Peebles House 
{Harper's, March, 1912). 

Stockley, Cynthia — The Road to Tuli (McClure's, April, 
1912). 

Norris, Kathleen — Bridging the Years (American 
Magazine, May. 1912). 

White, William Allen — A Kansas u Childe Roland" 
(in the volume entitled In Our Town, Doubleday, Page, 
1909). 



CHAPTER II.— WHAT SHALL YOU WRITE 
ABOUT? 

1. The importance of this question. The beginner 
instinctively pays little heed to his story themes. He 
feels that he may follow his own inclination, inasmuch 
as the range and variety of subjects successfully dealt 
with by story writers seem limitless. This impression, 
however, is dangerously misleading. Whether viewed 
as a work of art or as a piece of merchandise for the 
magazine market, the genre is definitely restricted in 
more respects than any other form of fiction. Whoever 
exceeds its bounds is almost certainly foredoomed to 
produce a story that is either ineffective or unsalable or 
both. 

2. The theme is limited in three directions. There are 
many restraints upon the theme. The most important 
of these may be classified under three heads: 

a. Those set by the story form. 

b. Those set by the writer's knowledge and beliefs. 

c. Those set by his audience. 

Not a few restraints are merely commercial; and these 
we shall consider in the last chapter of this book. 

a. Limits set by the story form. Recall what the short 
story is: a dramatic narrative with a single effect. Two 
ideals are to be realized in one form, and each of them 
is to give its own peculiar determination to this form. 

i. The theme must yield a plot. Human conduct with- 
out the developing crisis will not turn the trick, and the 
most terrific crisis without the struggling, controlling 

50 



WHAT SHALL YOU WRITE ABOUT? 51 

force of human nature at work in it will also fail. To 
be persuaded of this, study that wonderfully accurate and 
sympathetic medley of middle Western sketches by 
William Allen White, entitled In Our Town, 1 The 
majority of these are not short stories, either in form or by 
intent; but some of them are, notably the one entitled 
By the Rod of His Wrath. This is a terrific picture of the 
silent, crushing power of righteous public opinion. Here 
stands John Markley, who defied the decencies by putting 
aside his wife in middle age for a brazen office girl. And 
here stand John Markley's old friends, facing the moral 
crisis of having to be loyal either to him or to his out- 
raged wife (and through her to their own professed 
ethics). The story tells how they decided and 
lived up to their decision. Loose in its informality of 
narrative, it is none the less a genuine short story, flaw- 
less except for an insufficient dramatic emphasis upon 
some one of the many intense episodes in it. Now con- 
trast with it The Young Prince, in the same collection. 
This, you will instantly find, is only a swift little biography 
of a cub reporter. There lurks in it no complication, 
tragic or comic, wherein the Prince's loyalty, his pride, 
his sense of humor, his courage, or any other moral trait 
works out its own salvation. The picture is true; and 
there is some action, but not the sort that makes drama. 

ii. The theme, in order to produce a single effect, must 
be one which can be adequately handled within the span 
of a single perusal. It was Poe who pointed out this 
peculiar limitation. Lacking it, the novel " deprives 
itself, of course, of the immense force derivable from 
totality. Worldly interests intervening during the pauses 
of perusal modify, annul or contract . . . the 
impressions of the book. But simply cessation in read- 
ing would, of itself, be sufficient to destroy the true 

^oubleday, Page, 1909. 



52 SHORT STORY WRITING 

unity.' ' This psychological fact quite sharply defines 
the pure external magnitude of the short story, though 
not nearly so much as one might imagine from a survey 
of the magazines. For reasons discussed elsewhere, 
editors have limited the story to an ordinary maximum 
of 8,000 words (in England about 6,000) and they 
sometimes deceive themselves into believing that this 
measures the natural or proper size. As a matter of fact, 
it bears only a remote relation to the artistic (the psy- 
chological) maximum, which is fixed entirely by the 
particular theme and the particular reader. The single 
effect can be perfectly attained in a narrative of 40,000 
words, if only the theme is sufficiently obvious and simple, 
and the reader is exceptionally intelligent. Henry 
James' ghost story, The Turn of the Screw, is of that 
length, and certainly a person of concentration will 
derive from it a unity of impression no less pronounced 
than that which he gains from Poe's very brief Morella. 
No doubt, the gum-chewing stenographer who devours 
the literary offspring of Mr. Robert W. Chambers might 
have her difficulties with James' work. But this is 
only another way of my saying that the permissible 
length of a story depends upon the number of ideas and 
effects which its reader can easily carry in mind at once; 
and this, of course, varies with the reader's mental 
equipment. If he happens to be an Australian bush- 
man, he reaches his limit at the twentieth monosyllable. 
And if he is an eminent mathematician, he may read a 
hundred full-grown modern novels in quick succession 
and get from the whole group only a single effect, namely 
that of tedium. 

This individual difference is reckoned with roughly by 
magazines which cater to widely different classes of 
readers. A pretty accurate index of the public an 
editor seeks is given in the length of stories he favors. 



WHAT SHALL YOU WRITE ABOUT? 53 

If he prefers 2,500-word varieties, he is certainly appealing 
to a shallower type of mind than his colleague up the 
street does who handles 5,000-word goods. It is the 
average length, of course, that is significant; and varia- 
tions of a few hundred words are wholly meaningless. 
But, with some innocuous exaggeration, we might speak 
of the 2,000-word reader, the 4,000-word reader, the 
8,000-word reader, and the 15,000-word reader. Now, 
it is the likings and capacities of the first three species 
which define the practical limits of most contemporary 
stories. 

ii. This 8,000-word limit sets three restrictions upon 
the theme. It excludes all subjects which involve: 

a. An intricate plot, 

/?. Elaborate staging, and 

y. Detailed interpretation. 

a. Intricacy. No theme can be used whose plot con- 
tains more features and complications than can be clearly 
presented and worked through within the space limit 
above mentioned. And conversely, what can be adequately 
depicted in less than 2,000 words is almost certain to be 
no dramatic narrative, and hence no short story. For 
a dramatic narrative involves a large number of factors, 
the baldest account of which generally consumes more 
than that number of words. 

/?. Staging. This is the least important and most 
plastic of the restrictions. By the staging is meant that 
much of the total setting which is actually presented in 
detail to the reader. Often the setting is much fuller than 
the staging; just as in the early drama, where the setting, 
say a forest in Warwickshire, was represented in the 
staging by a single plucked bough, and a silent character 
on the scene symbolized by a cloak flung over a stick 
propped up in a corner. As with plays, so with short 



54 SHORT STORY WRITING 

stories. Some of them demand very little explicit develop- 
ment of the scenic circumstances under which their 
plots grow, while others, like Markheim, owe their very 
life to the vivid fulness of the environing conditions. 
Now, it is only with reference to these latter themes that 
staging becomes a serious problem; and, as they are not 
very common, the student need not pay much attention 
to the difficulty they raise. Let him learn only the 
two general rules by which they are rejected: 

A. A theme is unfit for a short story if its plot calls for a 
staging so elaborate that there remains for the development 
of the dramatic narrative not space enough within the as- 
signed limits of the story's total length. 

B. A theme is unfit also if its plot calls for the extensive 
staging of situations which interrupt the dramatic narrative. 

For further comment on this topic see the chapter on 
integrative intensifiers. 

y. Interpretation. The equivocation in this term must 
be cleared away before we can discuss the point here to 
be made. By 'interpretation' artists frequently mean 
their own personal rendering of an idea or a scene or a 
play. When, for instance, an actor gives his interpreta- 
tion of Hamlet, he represents the dismal Dane, not as 
Hamlet himself may have been, nor yet as Shakespeare 
may have conceived him, but as the player himself be- 
lieves the character is most truly or most dramatically 
exhibited. Again, a writer is said to interpret New York 
when he gives you a picture of the town as he sees it. 
Thus, in The Claws of the Tiger, Gouverneur Morris offers 
a powerful interpretation of the life-wrecking power and 
unspeakable vice of Tammany Hall. 

Now this meaning of 'interpretation' ought to be dis- 
carded; and for the excellent reason that, as soon as you 
apply it consistently, you strip it of significance. Any 
and every account becomes an interpretation. A private 



WHAT SHALL YOU WRITE ABOUT? 55 

letter sketching the ravages of mumps in the family is 
an interpretation. A morsel of gossip about the rector's 
cook eloping with the ice man is interpretation. For 
does not the reporter give you a picture of affairs as he 
perceives them? And does he not present them in the 
form he thinks best? He assuredly does. But in so doing 
he does not rise above the artistic level of a camera; for 
the camera too renders the landscape as it appears from 
its own private point of view and as sensed by a film of 
peculiar chemical make-up. Therefore, to speak of 
interpreting a story theme, in this loose sense, is to 
speak of nothing special. You do not graze any technical 
problem of artistic expression. 

The word has, however, another and a deeper meaning. 
To discern the significance of something, to clarify that 
which is obscure, to construe something which one's 
audience is in doubt about; all that is genuine interpreta- 
tion. It is a deliberate intellectual enterprise. Its 
purpose may not be the preacher's; it may be more akin 
to the scientist's. To finish with a Q. E. D., like Euclid, 
and to let the reader use the inference as he will, may 
be the author's one desire. And, when it is, the story 
gains mightily. There are few specimens of truly great 
stories which are wholly devoid of this quasi-scientific 
demonstration. Markheim conspicuously proves that 
there is always a way of checking a wicked habit, albeit 
a desperate way. Moonlight proves dramatically that, 
to sympathize with an emotion, one must experience it or 
something like it. Howells' A Circle in the Water proves 
in its own style that love alone arrests the consequences 
of wrong. And so on, with only occasional exceptions, 
unless we take into account simple love and adventure 
stories. It is pretty clear that, though interpretation is 
not essential to the short story, it elevates and glorifies the 
form as nothing else can. 



56 SHORT STORY WRITING 

So defined, the limitations under which interpretation 
suffers in the short story form are apparent. And the first 
of these is the one which Brunetiere had in mind when he 
wrote that the theme of the short story must be 'socially 
insignificant'. This phrase is inexact and needlessly damn- 
ing, but it does point toward a profound distinction be- 
tween short story and novel. There are many human 
truths which resemble Euclid's first theorems in that 
they are simple, fundamental, and proved in a few 
words. But there are many more which can be compared 
only with the propositions of integral calculus; for they 
are accessible only through a labyrinth of details. It 
is a simple truth that public opinion can, without force 
or fury, crush even a rich and powerful man who flouts 
it. It is a very obscure and intricate proposition that 
will tell the whole truth about the rights of a man to 
divorce a wife he is weary of. Some very intelligent 
people will say, in great heat, that the man has no right; 
and other no less intelligent people will assert vehemently 
that it is criminal to compel anybody to remain wedded 
against his or her wish. All of which proves that there 
are two sides to the question, and maybe twenty, and 
that nobody quite understands them all. Now the 
former truth, about the still power of the public, can be 
comprehended within the compass of a few thousand 
words; hence it is suited to the story form, and White has 
successfully employed it thus in By the Rod of His Wrath. 
But the second truth has not yet been demonstrated 
conclusively even in the longest novel; and it may never 
be, so multitudinous are the human interests which 
play into the problem of divorce, and so delicate is their 
weighing. Reason enough, then, for forbidding it to the 
story writer! And so, though it is raised in the reader's 
mind by White's story, White does not develop it at 
all. 



WHAT SHALL YOU WRITE ABOUT? 57 

The defect in Brunetiere's verdict now appears. It is 
not the social insignificance of John Markley's fate that 
led White to depict it in a short story instead of in a 
novel. Surely, few crises are of deeper importance to 
the individual and of wider consequence to the world 
than that which the village faced when Markley cast off 
his wife. What is there anywhere in Balzac or Thackeray 
that more deeply concerns society? Would the author 
have given us a false notion of its importance, had he 
expanded the story of it into a novel? By no means. 
Well then, why did he not make a novel of it? Simply 
because it could be perfectly demonstrated in a short 
story. When all is said and done, it is the very same 
reason that dissuaded Euclid from expanding his famous 
proposition about the angles of a triangle into a 100,000- 
word volume. A hundred and odd words did the business 
to perfection; and Euclid was too wise to exceed perfec- 
tion. He was not influenced by the fact that the truth 
about the triangle is of prodigious social importance. 
Had he done so; had he made the telling of the story 
commensurate with the , value of the truth in it, forty 
thick tomes would not have contained it. 

But, happily for the human race, the value of what men 
have to say has not the slightest connection with the 
fulness of its recounting. A truth, whether of geometry 
or of constitutional law or of every-day human nature, 
whether syllogistically or dramatically phrased, whether 
precious or trivial, fixes its own number of words pretty 
definitely. If it is intricate, it will demand a great array 
of language; if simple, one sentence may make it as clear 
as the sun in a cloudless sky. Here is, at bottom, no 
mystery of art or logic; it is only the primitive virtue of 
straightforward speech. 

This virtue imposes a restraint upon the interpretations 
which the short story writer may indulge in; a restraint, 



58 SHORT STORY WRITING 

by the way, which few beginners heed or, heeding, endure 
with patience. It is this: 

Do not attempt to interpret any matter which society 
finds problematic today 

If the human race has not yet found a clear answer to a 
question of social consequence, it is because the question 
is entangled and dark, or at least two-sided. And what- 
ever is so cannot be presented in such a manner as to 
produce that single effect which is the inalienable charm 
and right of the short story. 

b. The theme as limited by the writer's knowledge and 
beliefs. Before dipping into this matter, the reader will 
kindly call to mind that we are now considering the 
artistic ideals of the short story, not the commercial 
possibilities. Were he to overlook this fact, he would be 
perplexed by the two rules now to be framed, the first of 
which is: 

i. The writer must possess genuine knowledge of the matter 
actually employed in the dramatic narrative; but need not 
know any more. 

This rule meets with scant reverence. A horde of 
stories favored by editors exhibit appalling ignorance, 
not only of elementary facts about human nature but even 
about the habits and customs of the times, places, and 
social castes about whom the authors fabulate. 1 And a 
much larger multitude of stories give evidence that their 
authors, after taking pen in hand, have asked some Public 
Library assistant about the flora and fauna of the Tahiti 
Islands, and scanned Baedeker to find out whether Rus- 
sians drink vodka through a straw. But all this only goes 
to show what everybody knows, namely that, within cer- 

1 In fairness to editors, it should be added that the better maga- 
zines are admitting fewer stories of this sort than they did twenty- 
five years ago. But within the past twelvemonth at least half a 
dozen absurdities have been published. 



WHAT SHALL YOU WRITE ABOUT? 59 

tain bounds, gold-brick literature is a marketable commod- 
ity, no less than gold-brick stocks and gold-brick religion 
are. Also, it goes to show that few people can write good 
stories, and of those who can still fewer can pour them 
forth on contract, month in, month out. And so the 
wretched editors — Heaven comfort them! — have to take 
what they can get. 

The other clause in the rule is equally ignored. Even 
experienced writers often wade through volumes and 
volumes of sociological statistics, as a preliminary to 
contriving a story, let us say, about a Madison Street 
sweatshop. And I have heard promising young writers 
sigh, almost tearfully, that they could never hope to 
write psychological character stories like James' be- 
cause the poor dears had not mastered the other James' 
psychology. 

Now, this despair is a baseless superstition. The truth 
is, most facts that are important to scientists are only dis- 
tantly connected with those which help to make a situation 
dramatic. These latter are exclusively those which 
the persons in the dramatic situation are directly aware of. 
The sweater's kicks and curses, the garlicky air, the flat, 
high voice from the top of a sick workman's filling lungs, 
the twenty cents clipped off the week's pay for the crooked 
stitching, — these are the raw material of sweatshop drama. 
For it is they that men perceive, they that provoke to 
wrath, they that move victims to slay or to fling them- 
selves from bridges. The writer familiar with all such 
factors may dispense with the others. 

For this reason, the writer in search of material must 
turn, not to libraries nor to schools and laboratories, but 
to intimate every-day affairs. Other more dignified 
sources of truth will give him his bearings in the midst of 
life and sharpen his eyes toward good and evil. But never 



60 SHORT STORY WRITING 

can they teach him how to make his characters life-like, 
his situations real, and his climaxes tense. 

There remains a second limiting rule : 

ii. The writer is free to develop a theme which he does not 
believe. But he must understand hoiv and why the char- 
acters in the story feel and act as they do. And he must 
portray the reasons and causes of their acts sympathetically. 
If he cannot, he must give up the theme. 

This would scarcely be worth mentioning, but for the 
loose talk about 'sincerity' and 'earnestness' which many 
excellent critics, and even writers, are wont to indulge 
in. We have heard Chesterton assuring us that good 
fiction comes only from doctrinaires; and other milder ex- 
aggerates are constantly proclaiming that even the lightest 
tale, in order to be good art, must 'have a message', 
or 'point a moral', or come from the author's soul. And 
so, every season under such promptings, comes a host 
of fresh learners striving to pack their intensest beliefs 
into little stories. To forestall the harmful consequences 
of their misunderstanding, let them dwell upon the 
vast, conspicuous difference between belief (or moral earnest- 
ness) and sympathetic imagination. 

This difference must be apparent to anybody who 
dreams vividly or retains some shred of early youth's 
power of fantasy. The mind so constituted perceives 
the unreal as real and the preposterous as plausible. 
While the spell lasts, nothing mars the perfect reality of 
its presentments. Fiends, abysses, diamonds like hens' 
eggs, the men of Mars, — they are all, for the swift instant, 
just what they seem to be. Reason, paralyzed for the 
nonce, does not challenge their status; nor does the acid of 
common sense eat into their tenuous stuff. And so, in 
one sense, they convince us, and we believe in them. 

But they are not convincing in the more proper mean- 
ing of the word. They do not lay hold of us as the ideas 



WHAT SHALL YOU WRITE ABOUT? 61 

in Heretics lay hold of Chesterton, or as those in Widowers 1 
Houses master Bernard Shaw. They are not faiths which 
grow out of life and, in turn, regulate it; they merely 
possess such coherence and vivacity that, while we con- 
template them hy themselves, we cannot doubt them. As 
soon as we withdraw from their little sphere and reason 
about them, they lose their power over us. Consider, for 
instance, the tales of Poe. What is there in The Fall of 
the House of Usher that one could believe with a doctrin- 
aire's fine frenzy? Absolutely nothing. The whole som- 
bre creation is a picture, nothing more. But Poe dreamed 
it so clearly, and the disasters of it hang together in every 
minute detail so organically that the catastrophe possesses 
all the fleeting persuasiveness of a nightmare. While you 
read it, you inhabit a strange land. And the emotions 
which this, your bewildering translation, induce are all 
that you ask of the story teller. If he can produce this 
illusion of reality, you do not care what he believes per- 
sonally about anything. 

There is no denying that a story shaped by some lofty 
purpose often rises to heights attained by no idle play 
of the imagination. Not even the hilarity of an O. Henry 
nor his smother of puns mitigates the grim earnestness of 
An Unfinished Story; and few of his more light-hearted 
tales linger in the memory as does this attack upon the 
employer who underpays his shop-girls. And yet, when all 
is said, moral earnestness is only a strengthener, and 
high purposes are seven-league boots, at best, in the 
realm of the story writer. They improve, but they do 
not create. They intensify, but they do not furnish the 
material of brief fiction. Excellent they are, but not 
essential. In proof of this, many an author can testify 
that some of his most artistic, most successful works 
have developed themes which he disliked, characters whom 
he scorned, and ideas which he could not seriously enter- 



62 SHORT STORY WRITING 

tain. I have been told that there is a story writer of 
renown who deliberately shelves every plot of his which 
stirs him deeply in a serious way. And another echoes 
what Frohman says of the plays he reads: "Every one that 
I like personally is sure to fail." 

c. The theme as limited by the reader. 

It is difficult to separate the artistic restrictions from 
the commercial, in this case. For what a reader likes he 
will buy, and what he dislikes he will leave on the book- 
stand. Furthermore, he is much more interested in the 
topic of a book than in its style or the opinion it voices or 
the kinds of people appearing in it. His first decisive 
query is this: What does the story narrate, adventure 
or romance or a humorous situation or the inner life of a 
character? And if he wishes catch-breath deviltry, no 
amount of fine speech or pretty turns will make a simple 
love story attractive to him. For this reason, his influence 
will be discussed in the chapter on the business of story 
writing. He has nothing to do with the art of writing, 
but only with the art of selling the written. 

3. Available story material. Thus far we have been in- 
dicating what is not good story stuff. It is now time to 
ask what is good. 

a. Theme. There is no positive quality which marks 
the available theme. You may, if you choose, show 
dramatically that black is white, or that women should 
vote, or that virtue is an illusion, or that love is a lovely 
thing, or that lone widows ought never buy mining stock, 
or that things as they are aren't as they should be, or 
anything else. In brief, all we can say is that the theme 
may be whatever permits of dramatic development with a 
single effect. But this tells nothing about the particular 
content and quality of the idea. 

b. Plot. Here we begin to see light, and under it the 
story material shows up pretty definite. Almost every 



WHAT SHALL YOU WRITE ABOUT? 63 

experienced reader senses — at least vaguely — the quality 
which makes ideas and incidents and characters good for 
dramatic narrative. This quality has many names: 
one is 'human interest', another is 'emotional intensity', 
a third 'truth about human nature', and a fourth 'char- 
acter revelation'. But these are all too hazy, and the 
last is certainly too narrow. The first points at the truth 
but does not attain it. Editors assure us that 'human 
interest' is the flavor and perfume of every excellent 
story. But what is human interest? How shall we know 
it when we meet it? Has it a formula, that the tyro of 
Grub Street may make it to order? Profound silence in 
editorial offices! And the literary critics are not much 
noisier. The truth is, no clear analysis of this nebulous 
literary virtue has been rendered. But the way has 
been cleared by contemporary psychologists. Their 
studies of attention and interest are suggestive. 

c. Interest Between simple attention and interest 
stretches a wide gulf. A person attends to things more 
or less passively. A loud noise, a flash of light, a strange 
voice, indeed almost anything different from what we 
happen to be noticing at the moment, will draw our minds 
in that peculiar way which is called attending. Not so, 
however, do things compel us to be interested in them. 
The direction of our interest is set largely by our own 
wills and our beliefs. We give attention, but we take 
interest. In the first case there is a yielding, in the 
second a seizing. When interested in something, we lay 
hold of its features and we actively think about them, in 
some of their bearings. Are you interested in the ven- 
tures of a slack-wire artist? Then you surely do more 
than follow his shaking march across the stage. You 
wonder how he will manage to keep his balance after 
dropping his pole. You try to figure out what move he 
will make next. You judge his chances of breaking a leg. 



64 SHORT STORY WRITING 

You reflect upon the patience and skill his feats represent. 
In short, you think hard. And so it is with great affairs, 
too. If you take interest, say, in immigration or in 
divorce or in Roosevelt, you do not merely attend as you 
might to the pop of a toy pistol. You think, think, think 
about causes and consequences, about the perils and the 
benefits, about the right and the wrong of it all. Here 
we have the infallible psychological mark of 'human in- 
terest'; the interesting thing is the thing which provokes 
thought. 

d. What provokes thought? This query arises at once. 
For, unless it is answered, the above description will not 
enlighten us much. Fortunately, though, our pragmatic 
philosophers have hit upon its solution. Thought is 
provoked by any situation from which our instincts and our 
established habits do not automatically deliver us. It 
offers us a new critical weapon which cleanly cuts the 
fit from the unfit material of artistic fiction. But let us 
first inspect the fact itself. 

Most people think only when they have to. This 
incontestable fact you may utter with a cynical sneer, 
if you have not reflected upon it. But if you have, you 
know that the arrangement is not so bad as it sounds. In- 
deed, it is pretty useful, taken by and large. It is not 
ideal, to be sure; in a perfectly appointed world we 
should never think at all but should only enjoy life, solving 
all problems mechanically, as we dislodge dust from the 
eyes and digest our food. Seeing the universe is what it 
is, though, a place full of change and entanglements, so 
complex that no machinery, however intricate and well 
fashioned, could do the right thing always at the right 
time, this painful and difficult activity of thinking must 
be invoked. Whatsoever we can manage through some 
other agency we do so manage. And, if thinking is im- 
perative for a while, we make that while as brief as possi- 



WHAT SHALL YOU WRITE ABOUT? 65 

ble. The baby thinks in learning to walk, but as soon as 
his feet move surely he refrains from cogitation. He 
thinks over his speech, too, but quickly he outgrows that, 
transforming discourse from an intellectual performance 
to a reflex habit. And he never thinks about the order 
and choice of words again, unless they give rise to some 
new, unforeseen perplexity; as, for instance, they might, 
were he suddenly afflicted with stammering or stage 
fright. This is no scandal, it is a great convenience. 
Thanks to it, men are able to concern themselves with 
fresh enterprises and hence to progress. Inaeed, civiliza- 
tion is a titanic monument to thoughtlessness, no less than 
to thought. The supreme triumph ol mind is to dispense 
with itself. For what would intellect avail us, if we 
could not withdraw it from action in all the habitual en- 
counters of daily life? Suppose we had to think how 
to lace our shoes and steer sandwiches to our mouths! 
And what if we had to set going the machinery of 
Aristotle's logic whenever we sought to say "Good 
morning"! 

e. The thought-provoh" ,ig situation is what we call a 
problem. This is in accord with common usage, and also 
with philosophy. Its implication carries us far from 
many current theories about fiction. For it means 
that 'human interest 1 is confined to problems, and that 
every good story is a problem story. Pretty soon we shall 
have to explain what a problem story is and incidentally 
clear away the easy but false supposition that it deals 
with only the acute and ultimate social issues, as the 
' problem play' does. For the moment, though, let us 
draw another distinction. 

Not every problem awakens the kind of human interest 
which editors sigh for. A situation provoking thought is 
not inevitably suitable for fiction. If it were, all the 
innumerable puzzles of science and politics and huck- 



66 SHORT STORY WRITING 

sterdom would fall within its domain; yea, and even the 
questions the Walrus put to the Carpenter. Is a butterfly 
a moth, and if not, why not? There you have matter 
calling for some exercise of intellect; and yet it is obvi- 
ously not to be threshed out by 0. Henry or Henry James. 
Although it awakens human interest, it is incompatible 
with the ideals of the short story. For it is not intrinsically 
dramatic. This fact at once suggests that there are 
several kinds of thought-provoking situations, and 
that only certain of these yield to the story teller's 
art. 

f. Three varieties of situations. A little reflection will 
show that situations may be classified with respect to the 
manner of managing them. Three types thereupon 
appear: 

i. Those which can be managed by action alone. 
Thus, the dodging of a missile; rebuffing a person who 
seeks to tempt you with some outrageous offer; grasping a 
friend's arm, as he slips on an icy sidewalk. In such 
cases you do not stop to think; you simply 'do the right 
thing'. 

ii. Situations which can be managed with pure thought 
alone. For instance, multiplying 56 by 9; or discovering 
the motives of a supposed friend who has grossly in- 
sulted you; or laying bare a conspiracy, by inference from 
a chance remark you overhear in the street car. 

iii. Situations which can be managed only by thought 
and some consequent personal action. 1 Thus, in A Coward y 

1 Were this a book on the psychology of conduct, I should de- 
scribe a fourth situation, namely that which can be managed only 
by thinking and simultaneous action. Here the action is not the 
consequence of prior thinking, as it is in the dramatic situation; 
rather is it an aid in thinking. Of this sort is all experiment. One 
reflects up to a certain point; then does something to test his pro- 
visional inferences or else to clarify the matter of the problem; and 



WHAT SHALL YOU WRITE ABOUT? 67 

the predicament into which Maupassant brings the vis- 
count; the unhappy man must first think a long time, 
but thinking alone will not solve his difficulty. Thought 
must be followed by action. And so too in every dramatic 
situation. Here we have come upon the mark of the 
species. 

g. The third type of situation fulfills only one ideal of the 
short story. In the primitive sense of the words, this kind 
of situation gives rise to the behavior called dramatic. 
Certainly the thinking it evokes displays human nature 
somehow, and certainly too the action that grows out of 
that thinking is 'in character'. Nevertheless, one might 
easily suggest a host of cases possessing these features 
and yet being too dull and colorless for fictional purposes. 
To give an extreme sample: a cook might inadvertently 
pepper a stew with roach powder three minutes before 
family and guests were to dine. There's a situation that 
ought to stir any ambitious culinary champion to deep 
thought. Cook might ponder desperately, torn be- 
tween the impulse to fly into the Plutonian night and the 
impulse to open a can of soused mackerel and serve it in 
place of the wrecked stew. In the end, the fish might 
triumph over the flight; cook would clutch the can-opener 
desperately and march into the pantry. There you find 
all the elements of mere drama, and yet not the plot of even 
a weak short story. The trouble with it is the sharp de- 
cline in the last act. You may be moderately excited by 
the fatal dose of roach powder. You may wonder poig- 
nantly over the prospects of cook's blasted reputation or 
over the fate of the diners, if cook serves the stew. But, 
the minute you learn that mackerel are on hand to rescue 

so on, with constant interplay. For psychological and ethical 
purposes it is important to hold this variety of situation apart. 
But the story writer need not concern himself with it, beyond notic- 
ing its existence. 



68 SHORT STORY WRITING 

cook from ignominy and the diners from hospital, the 
tension is over. You know that the finish will be calm, 
easy, and cheerful. In other words, there is one effect 
in the crucial situation of the episode, and another effect 
in the denouement; and this violates the second ideal of the 
short story. 

h. For the purposes of the short story, the complica- 
tion, the crisis, and the denouement must be of either equal 
or ascending effectiveness. Nothing can be more deadly 
than the declining effect. It is even worse than 
a story which is dull throughout, for it awakens in you 
hopes of a thrilling end and then disappoints you. Few 
will hesitate to confirm this fact, and yet many persist 
in ignoring it when they turn to write fiction. I am con- 
tinually amazed at the scant attention given by fairly ca- 
pable authors to the sustained finish. They conjure up 
excellent dramatic situations and vigorous, sharply ac- 
centuated characters, but halt as soon as they have done 
that much. It may be that they fancy their 
heroines can work out their own salvation and at the 
same stroke please the reader. At any rate, this delusion 
has been fostered and popularized by a literary school 
which some are pleased to miscall 'psychological realism'. 
The ideal of this school is to depict the stream of con- 
sciousness in its natural flow across a natural world. 
Given a certain character, what must he do in a certain 
situation? What impulses, feelings, or prejudices will 
dominate his conduct? It is, they say, the artist's task to 
answer this question pictorially. As Ho wells, puts it: 
"the true plot comes out of the character; that is, the man 
does not result from the things he does, but the things he 
does result from the man, and so plot comes out of charac- 
ter, plot aforethought does not characterize". Or, as one 
might say a little more exactly, the deliberate choice of a 



WHAT SHALL YOU WRITE ABOUT? 69 

man in a given situation is the stuff of which a good 
story must be made. 

Now, for argument's sake, we might grant this much 
(though we deny it as a matter of fact); and yet we 
should have to repudiate the all too common inference 
from it, that all cases of a person choosing and shaping his 
conduct will serve the fictionist. No logic can extract 
this proposition from the original one, and only a narrow 
artistic theory can defend it against the army of adverse 
instances. Few indeed are the stories beloved of the world 
which depict the triumph of pure human nature; and 
many are those which, having done this, fail to delight 
the average cultured reader. In The Pursuit of the Piano 1 
Howells himself has furnished a capital specimen for the 
refuting of his own theory. 

No jaded reader could ask for a more promising, 
whimsical situation than that which sets this story going. 
A soberly romantic lawyer chances to catch the name 
of a young lady on a boxed piano which, on its way to 
her New Hampshire home, passes the cafe window at 
which he sits breakfasting. On his journey to some 
friends the piano haunts him, bobbing up at every 
station. First idly wondering, then amused, then vexed, 
then jesting over it with his friends, the attorney finally, 
by dint of thinking much about the instrument and its 
owner, . . . But we must not tell the story just 
yet. Stopping here, you will surely sense the delightful 
possibilities of the odd encounter. Now, if the theory 
of psychological realism is sound, a good story would 
inevitably result from the depicting of the hero con- 
trolling and finishing up the complication, by the use of 
his own inner nature, his impulses, his desires, his fancies, 
his serious reflections. Unfortunately, though, it does 
not work out that way here. The inner history of 

1 In A Pair of Patient Lovers. 



70 SHORT STORY WRITING 

Gaites, the lawyer, is faithfully drawn. Two or three 
hundred of his mental states are painstakingly recorded; 
and every turn, halt, and advance toward the end which 
such a man in just such an affair must attain is illumi- 
nated. But, for all that, the story ends flat — and the flat- 
ness is quite exasperating, in spite of the delicious predica- 
ment Gaites is brought into at the close. This predica- 
ment is irrelevant to the plot, — a mere adornment, albeit 
a good one. The story ends with the true lovers em- 
bracing in the Cloister; for then and there the initial 
complication solves itself, the pursuit of the piano is over, 
and the central character works out what we all hope is his 
salvation. Now, this entire scene is incomparably weaker 
than any before it. It neither thrills nor excites nor 
tickles nor alleviates nor even offends. It is just what 
a sane young man and a sane young woman would do, 
according to all the laws of mental balance and con- 
temporary manners; which is to say that it is as un- 
dramatic as coffee and rolls. 

What does this suggest, if not that a real character 
seldom acts dramatically? Still less often does his con- 
duct in a crisis appear dramatic to a spectator who sees 
all his inner motives, impulses, and directions in their 
entirety. Let us frame the truth with a paradox: let us 
say that most acts which are true to character are not 
characteristic. Much that a man does under the guid- 
ance of some impulse or sentiment may be consistent 
with the latter and yet may not imply it. 

Here once more we discover the dramatic effect resting 
upon a purely intellectual one. If you will turn to your 
Elements of Logic, you will find that any given proposition 
is implied by an infinite number of pairs of other proposi- 
tions. Thus, to show that Socrates is mortal, you may 
assert that Socrates is an Athenian, and all Athenians are 
mortal; or that Socrates is a philosopher, and all phi- 



WHAT SHALL YOU WRITE ABOUT? 71 

losophers return to dust; or that Socrates is harassed by his 
wife, and that all men who live in such connubial conflict 
come to an untimely end; and so on, endlessly. It is 
for this purely logical reason that, if told only that Soc- 
rates is mortal, you do not know much about him. True 
as mortality is to his nature, it does not characterize 
it; it does not mark off this man from other creatures, 
nor does it indicate its own inner necessity. It is nothing 
more than a scrap of information, as unenlightening as it 
is true. For, though it is implied by Socrates' nature, it 
does not imply this nature; and hence it is no genuine 
revelation. 

Now apply this distinction to character drawing. 
Suppose you wish to picture a cruel man. You will cast 
about for appropriate incidents. You may observe a 
cruel man for a long time and jot down all that he does. 
Much of this will doubtless flow from his harshness; he 
may squeeze his debtors, he may beat children, and he 
may know no gratitude. But can you, merely by setting 
down such episodes, be sure of revealing the villain's 
personality? Not at all. For all such acts, though in- 
volved in the trait of cruelty, do not necessarily involve 
this trait. A kind man in desperate straits may squeeze 
debtors; a gentle neurasthenic lady may beat children 
mercilessly, when she is 'having a spell'; and a merely 
stupid man may be thankless toward his benefactors. 
These acts, therefore, carry in themselves no final, 
irresistible conviction about their perpetrators; for a great 
variety of temperaments, appetites, and passing emotions 
may terminate in such conduct. Not even the psycho- 
logical inevitability of their happening in a given situation 
lends them any genuine significance. A sneeze is more 
inevitable than a woman's decision in a love affair. A 
sane man's resolve to come indoors when it rains is 
more inevitable than his resolve to forgive an enemy. 



72 SHORT STORY WRITING 

But which is more dramatic? Which reveals the char- 
acter? 

We may, in conclusion, bring the matter into rela- 
tion with the other ideal of the short story, the single 
effect. The writer who begins with a character supposed 
to have a certain trait and with a situation in which this 
trait is to be developed must, of course, live up to his 
promises. He must persuade us that his hero is just the 
sort of person intended. Now, if the hero's conduct is 
merely consistent throughout the tale, his nature will be 
equivocal. If it is equivocal, it is vague. If vague, it 
lacks the effect of a clear-cut character. Hence the story 
produces at least two effects, that of the initial situa- 
tion and all its half-pledges, and that of the development. 
And, so, it has failed. 

i. The single effect in dramatic narrative is generally pro- 
duced, not by depicting a mere problem, but by depicting a 
conflict. And this conflict ends in one of two ways: (a) it 
brings out an act which is uniquely characteristic of the 
actor, or else (b) it finishes with a merely consistent act of 
violation. These are the only two clearly marked types of 
conduct which hold the reader's interest to the last without 
altering its quality. 

a. The uniquely characteristic act. In an oft-cited 
remark to Maupassant Flaubert says: 

When you pass a grocer sitting at the door of his shop, 
a janitor smoking his pipe, a stand of hackney coaches, 
show me that grocer and that janitor, their attitudes, their 
whole physical appearance, embracing likewise . 
their whole moral nature, so that I cannot confound them 
with any other grocer or any other janitor. Make me 
see, in one word, that a certain cab horse does not re- 
semble the fifty others that follow or precede it. 

This advice is sound, though not to be followed except 
in the handling of the most important features of a story, 



WHAT SHALL YOU WRITE ABOUT? 73 

especially in character drawing and plotting. To catch 
individuality is the artist's highest achievement; for in- 
dividuality is single in its effect and essentially dramatic, 
thus realizing the two virtues of brief fiction. An act 
which brings out this, the quality of the whole man, 
need not be exciting. It may be, apart from its setting, 
the veriest trifle, as it is in 0. Henry's The Moment of 
Victory, where the hero, bespangled with war medals, 
walks up to the girl who long ago had jilted him con- 
temptuously and says to her: "Oh, I don't know! Maybe 
I could if I tried!" Being ignorant of the hero's previous 
deed and of the girl's cruelty, you would find little in this 
climax to interest you. But, as a revelation of Willie 
Robbins' career and soul, it is perfect. It is not simply 
the truth, it is the one truth that enlightens. 

b. The consistent act of violation. Please construe 
'violation' in its legal sense. It means disregard of law or 
custom. Thus it includes not only excesses of physical 
force but also every case of formal transgression, how- 
ever mild or free from appeal to brawn or malicious 
cunning. The splendid lie by which Jean Francois 
cheated justice and saved his cowardly friend, in Coppee's 
masterpiece, The Substitute, is no deed of brute force; but it 
does do violence to law and custom in that it delivered 
a criminal from justice and punished an innocent man. 
And so it falls well within our definition. So too does the 
horrible murder of the little boy in Merimee's Mateo 
Falcone. It is not the outburst of passion nor the horror 
of its deed that makes it a sound dramatic ending. It 
is its human consistency which, added to the intensity of 
the act, warrants it. That is to say, a man living in 
Corsica and brought up as Mateo Falcone was would come 
to esteem loyalty above justice, even to the point of slaying 
his own son for betraying a criminal who had put his 
trust in the lad. This violates the reader's notion of law 



74 SHORT STORY WRITING 

and order, as well as the official proprieties of Corsica. If 
it did not, the story's ending would be quite flat; it would 
not differ from the legalized hanging of a condemned 
murderer, which is an undramatic horror. May it not 
well be that a Corsican bandit would find Merimee's 
grisly tale a tame moral story? For to him Falcone's 
deed would not appear at all unlawful. Its harshness 
would strike him as the unfortunate but necessary harsh- 
ness of a wise custom wisely enforced. He would say 
that it was no more dramatic than defending oneself with 
a cane against street thugs. 

j. The three levels of conflict. We have said that the 
only situation suited to fictional presentation is that which, 
in real life, would stimulate the characters to thought 
and action. The broader structural features of such a 
situation have just been indicated; it now remains for us to 
point out the material of which it is made. This exhibits 
three pretty sharp forms: the conflict may lie between, 

a. Man and the physical world. 

b. Man and man. 

c. One force and another, in the same man. 

a. Man and the physical world. This is the primary 
battle of life, the battle which the coddled city-folk forget 
so easily. The struggle against a head-wind, the nursing 
of a pitiful corn crop through a desperate drought, the 
hungry searching for a rabbit in the bitter winter wood, 
the flight from wild beasts, and the escape from savage 
captors, — of such is still the life of the Lower Billion, who 
inhabit most of the earth beyond Fifth Avenue. 
Those who are not of the Lower Billion sometimes look 
down upon such adventures and sniff top-loftily at the 
'thrillers' which are written about them. But you must 
pay no heed to such talk. It is only the critics' back- 
handed way of saying that they are too far from raw life 
to understand it sympathetically. 



WHAT SHALL YOU WRITE ABOUT? 75 

For the average reader, man's battle with nature will 
continue to be the most absorbing story theme, and man's 
triumphant conspiracy against nature's blind, dumb 
cruelty will remain the supreme story plot, until the last 
frontier has yielded to the moving picture show and the 
hot-water flat. And, even in that day, the adventure 
story will grip the young and the under-educated; for 
to these the world teems with mystery, perils, and sudden 
shocks. And they will read what they understand. 

b. Man and man. Society is a gigantic compromise 
whereby millions of people who differ from one another 
more widely than chimpanzee differs from orang-outang 
may rub up against one another with a minimum of 
offense. Excellent as the compromise is, in many re- 
spects, it is not and never will be so skilfully devised 
that every man may have what he wants and be rid of 
what irks him. In this unpleasant fact you have, re- 
duced to lowest terms, the basic dilemma which generates 
thousands of story plots, all of which may fairly be called 
social. Two lads wooing the same lass; two workmen 
after the same job; two millionaires scheming against 
each other, to control a railroad; two politicians seeking 
the same contract; two ladies sighing to lead the Upper 
Ten of Hicksville; two school boys after the captaincy of 
the baseball team: these are headed for a very different 
battle from that which the wilderness hunter wages against 
lions and famine. They are matching desire against de- 
sire, faith against faith, personality against personality. 

It is in this field of conflicts that the average mature 
man of today finds his steadiest entertainment. And 
the reason for this lies on the surface of affairs. It is be- 
cause fiction readers take deepest interest in what touches 
vitally their daily life. Adventure stories will thrill 
more sharply and be sought more eagerly in hours of utter 
relaxation. But they must yield to the social story, for 



76 SHORT STORY WRITING 

they lack altogether its power of awakening thought and 
the more thoughtful emotions. There was an age when 
they did not wholly lack it; and that not so very long ago. 
As late as Shakespeare's day most people inhabited a 
world of freebooters, sudden wars, and irresistible plagues; 
a world whose brutal vicissitudes called for a man's best 
thinking and commanded his attention for a goodly part 
of his life. And so adventure had a reality and a serious- 
ness even to the comfortable burgher and the office scriv- 
ener. It was not a thing apart from life. To the burgher 
the press-gang might come in the night and lure him 
aboard the King's four-decker, to brave the cutlasses of 
Barbary pirates, on far-off, sweltering seas. And the 
village clerk might become, on an instant's command, the 
go-between for lordly lovers or the spy of high intriguers. 
But these possibilities are no more. Ours are other dan- 
gers. We may be swindled by rascally promoters, or 
looted by the tariff, or injured by society's foibles and 
superstitions; or caught in a conflict of morals; and so it is 
to these that our imagination will turn most freely and 
with the soberest, most sustained interest. 

c. One force with another, in the same man. This 
conflict furnishes the stuff of which the so-called psycholog- 
ical story is made. You see most clearly what it is, if you 
inspect one of its most admirable specimens, Markheim. 
The struggle which Stevenson here depicts is purely in- 
ternal. It is all the murderer's struggle with himself; or, 
more precisely, the conflict between two natures in him. 
The shopkeeper whom he slays is only an incidental 
presence; the real characters are the souls of Markheim. 
And so it is always in stories of this class. 

Such conflicts are not discerned by the greater public. 
It is not in the average man's power to analyze and inter- 
pret impulses, thoughts and emotions; or even to observe 
the flux of these accurately. Indeed, he is scarcely 



WHAT SHALL YOU WRITE ABOUT? 77 

aware of their existence. He knows only the things which 
stir them into existence, and all his instinctive interest is 
in those same things, as it should be. There is no more 
reason for his being intimate with them than there is 
for his investigating minutely the workings of his heart 
valves or the chemical processes of his spinal cord. The 
immediate, the pressing problems of his life come from the 
world about him and from the people with whom he has to 
deal. What with the worries of business and politics and 
social affairs, Tom, Dick and Harry find scant time for 
musing over their private mental machinery. And Na- 
ture has wisely endowed them with little knack in that 
direction. 

Thus it appears that the three types of conflict appeal 
respectively to the three chief types of mind; the primitive, 
the socialized, and the intellectual. As we shall see 
later, this fact must influence both the construction and 
the literary manner of all stories. 



78 SHORT STORY WRITING 



Exercises 

1. Which qualities of a short story are given in the 
following? 2. Which are wholly lacking? 3. Which are 
suggested? 

A pathetic plea that a town be saved from desertion 
has come to the State Railroad Commission. It is 
from Theresa, 35 miles north of Milwaukee, a settlement 
of 350 inhabitants, which feels that it is really off the 
map because the Chicago, Minneapolis & Sault Ste. 
Marie Railway line was built about a mile and a half 
away from it. The citizens now ask that the road be 
compelled to build a spur track, and run trains so that it 
can realize its destiny. 

Theresa was an old-time fur trading post, established 
in 1842 by Solomon Juneau, son of the founder of Mil- 
waukee, and named after his eldest daughter. Many 
French Canadians went to live there, and the place at 
one time seemed to have a bright future. The indifference 
of the railroad, however, resulted in the building up of 
Theresa Station outside its old bounds, and in late years 
the enterprising younger people and immigrants have 
settled there instead of the original town. Population 
and prosperity have dwindled in the face of growth all 
about. For a long time this condition was permitted 
to go unchecked, but at length the " booster" has come 
and the Theresa Advancement Association has been 
formed. It is this organization that has appealed to the 
Railroad Commission in a quaint document. Here are 
some of its paragraphs : 

The town began to wane in the early 70's in business prominence 
because of the ever lacking transportation facilities. 

Our $16,000 school has now only two departments and our dis- 
trict has lost the yearly State aid on account of incompetency. 

It even has not beeD successful to induce the retiring farmer as 
even he wants his accommodations yet and wants to spend the rest 
of his life in a town that is pressing gaily ahead instead of the one 
going to the contrary. 



EXERCISES 81 

Henry, 0., — No Story (in Options). 
Freeman, Mary Wilkins, — Old Lady Pingree (in A 
Humble Romance). 

Maupassant, — The Horla. 

Moore, G., — Homesickness (in The Untilled Field). 
Stockton, F. R., — The Lady, or the Tiger? 
Aldrich, T. B., — Marjorie Daw. 



CHAPTER III.— WHAT SHALL YOU SAY 
ABOUT IT? 

SECTION I. GENERAL PRINCIPLES 

In the preceding chapter we have looked at the various 
kinds of dramatic situations which may produce the 
single effect. We now have to ask how these shall be 
presented so as to produce it. This question brings us 
into technique. 
/ 1. Tell the story. Foolish though it may sound, this 
is the first advice which the beginner must take to heart. 
To be sure, it does not inform him how to tell his tale; but 
it does direct his efforts. For the advice means that 
the writer must attend, first of all, to reporting the affairs 
which constitute the plot Put negatively, the substance 
of this commandment shines forth more clearly. Let us 
phrase it thus: 

Pay no special attention to description of scenes, char- 
acter drawing, philosophizing, or stylistic effects until you 
have stated all the essentials of the plot so clearly that the 
theme and the outcome and the single effect are apparent 
(though not necessarily vivid) and unequivocal. 

For many this is the hardest lesson of all. Especially 
does it irk those straight-away writers who dash off 
their brilliant ideas at a single sitting, in white heat. 
Their attention inevitably fluctuates between plot and 
characters, characters and setting, setting and phrase- 
ology; and so, unless the story is tremendously vivid 
and quite simple in structure, they lose sight of some 
incidents upon whose sharpening the very sense and 

82 



WHAT SHALL YOU SAY A* OUT IT? 83 

import of the narrative depend. Now I do not say 
that straight-away writing is therefore to be decried. 
Far from it. Some good writers work so most naturally, 
and everybody should try to. But to the beginner the 
danger of the method is usually present, and its avoidance 
does not make the above warning less trustworthy; it 
only shows that the particular writer is exceptionally skil- 
ful in carrying many details in his mind simultaneously. 
There is no denying that the story's the thing, after 
all; and that all its finish, its clever turns, its ingenious 
trappings, and its sparkling epigrams are but poor 
tinsel, once the drama which they overlay is veiled, 
blurred, or broken. Now, it is just this axiom which 
warrants the rule we have laid down. It is this, too, 
which indirectly accounts for the fact that most good 
story writers have served an apprenticeship as newspaper 
reporters. People usually suppose that the work of a 
reporter brings him into touch with life, and that the 
intimacy with human nature which he thus acquires is 
what makes his stories. But this is less than a half- 
truth. To be sure, the reporter does rub up against the 
realities of things more than bookkeepers and fishwives 
do; but there are many professions and trades which 
penetrate toward the springs of human nature far more 
deeply than he. The average physician, the lawyer, the 
policeman, the settlement worker, the business man, 
the valet, and even the apartment janitor see some 
Things as They Are more lucidly than he; for they are 
participants and witnesses, whereas he only jots down 
their testimony. Why, then, is it that there are so few 
physicians and lawyers and valets penning memorable 
stories, and so many reporters doing it? It is because 
the newspaper man becomes proficient in setting down 
the story, the whole story, and nothing but the story. 
The facts without trimmings he must deliver daily. 



84 SHORT STORY WRITING 

Doing this, he masters the first and most important 
trick of story telling. 

The beginner cannot do better than imitate the news- 
paper man's procedure, in its essentials. For the drill's 
sake, we shall schematize the latter a little beyond the 
form of ordinary journalistic practice. In handling a 
topic important enough to head a column, the reporter 
commonly performs three operations with his material. 
First, on the scene of the news-gathering (or on his way 
back to the office), he jots down phrase-wise the gist of 
the story, and its most striking feature. At his desk, 
he leads off with a few paragraphs, giving this same gist 
in simple narrative, so that the hasty newspaper reader 
may learn the facts in the first half-minute and, if they 
do not interest him, skip elsewhere. This opening sum- 
mary is followed by a more elaborate account which 
brings in the interesting incidentals. Frequently this 
approaches literary form; and the writer improves it in 
later editions of the paper (drawing upon his imagination 
now and then, alas!). 

Now, let the story writer do likewise. Having an idea 
for a story, let him first sketch it in the following form: 1 

1. The theme is 

2. The main complication is 

3. The dominant character is 

4. The decisive character trait is 

5. The crucial situation is 

6. The outcome is. 

In answering these questions, do not use single words 
or phrases. Use declarative sentences, whenever possible. 

1 The meaning of these questions will be cleared up in later sec- 
tions of this chapter. 



WHAT SHALL YOU SAY ABOUT IT? 85 

Other modes of expression are hazy and may only con- 
ceal a vagueness in your own mind. 

Next, draw up a bald report of the story in less than 
500 words, mentioning only as much as is needed to 
make it absolutely clear. State it as though you were 
reporting an actual happening for a newspaper. 

Finally, expand it so as to produce the strongest 
possible single effect. 

2. What the simple report must contain. This is the 
first matter to be settled after the general idea of the 
story has been hit upon. The writer must fix upon his 
material before concerning himself with its literary 
form. Now, this material includes: 

a. The circumstances giving rise to the main complica- 
tion. 

b. The persons actively involved in the main compli- 
cation. 

c. The main complication itself. 

d. The character trait (if any) which shapes the course 
of events. 

e. The crucial situation (sometimes ambiguously called 
the climax), in which the consequences of the initial com- 
plication reach their highest intensity. 

f. The outcome or solution of the crucial situation 
(sometimes called the denouement.) 

g. The import (or lesson) of the story, if it happens 
that this is as striking as the events themselves. 

To illustrate these contents, look at Kipling's The 
Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes. The generating 
circumstances of this story are, on the one hand, the 
alleged Hindu custom of consigning to an open-air 
prison those who recover from trance and catalepsy; 
and, on the other hand, Jukes' business visit to a desert 



86 SHORT STORY WRITING 

where such a prison was situated, and his falling ill of 
fever and chasing a wild dog, in his delirium. The 
persons actively involved in the main complication are 
Jukes, Gunga Dass, and the sentinel. The main com- 
plication is Jukes' tumbling into the horrible village of 
the officially dead, whence escape seems impossible. 
The character trait which shapes the course of events is 
Gunga Dass' greed; his treachery also counts heavily. 
(But neither actually solves the complication; in other 
words, this is not a character story.) The crucial situa- 
tion is that in which Gunga Dass assaults Jukes and leaves 
him at the quicksand's edge, robbed of the paper which 
showed the way of escape. The outcome is the arrival 
of Dunnoo at the edge of the pit, and his rescue of his 
master. The story has no import or lesson; it is simple 
adventure. In this respect most stories resemble it; 
and a very large number depict no important character 
trait. None of the other five materials, however, are 
ever wholly absent from a genuine story. 

The learner is particularly warned against slurring 
over the generating circumstances and the character 
trait. These are commonly neglected, to the reader's 
distress. Often minute incidents in the opening situa- 
tion throw much light upon the later course of affairs, 
and so too do trifling deeds of the hero. It is all too easy 
to overlook such in the rush of the narrative. 

3. The form of 'presentation. We now stand at the 
threshold of technique. To render the facts of the 
story is a reporter's task. But reporting is not stou- 
tening. One may tell a truth without casting it into 
dramatic narrative, and without producing that single 
effect which is the very soul of the short story. Not all 
good narrative is drama, nor does all good drama yield a 
unified impression. But what, now, does fulfil the 
double ideal of our art? 



WHAT SHALL YOU SAY ABOUT IT? 87 

As has been said, there is no particular mechanical or 
outward form which all good stories alike assume. There 
is, though, a small set of principles which are deduced 
from the double ideal and produce the desired re- 
sult. 

We have seen that the single effect may be produced 
either by developing a theme after the fashion of a 
narrative sermon, or else by stressing one or more of the 
three factors of the dramatic narrative, namely the 
character, the complication, or the setting. Now, this 
means that the effect is not contributed by something 
apart from the story proper; not by fine descriptions 
joined to the dramatic narrative, nor by a running fire of 
aphorisms on the side, nor by any other device save the 
plot itself. If the effect is produced by the theme, it is 
produced only in and through the events which demon- 
strate the theme, as in Hawthorne's The Great Stone Face, 
If it is produced by emphasis of a dramatic factor, it is 
again the narrative containing this factor that turns the 
trick. In short, the two ideals are realized, not by two 
distinct 'parts of a story, but in each and every part of it 
identically. Their respective expressions are related 
as are pattern and argument, in prose exposition generally. 
This relation Stevenson aptly describes thus: 

The conjuror juggles with two oranges, and our pleasure 
in beholding him springs from this, that neither is for an 
instant overlooked or sacrificed. So with the writer. 
His pattern, which is to please the supersensual ear, is 
yet addressed, throughout and first of all, to the demands 
of logic. Whatever be the obscurities, whatever the 
intricacies of the argument, the neatness of the fabric 
must not suffer, or the artist has proved unequal to his 
design. And on the other hand, no form of words must be 
selected, no knot must be tied among the phrases, unless 
knot and word be precisely what is wanted to forward 
and illuminate the argument; for to fail in this is to 



88 SHORT STORY WRITING 

swindle in the game. . . . Pattern and argument 
live in each other; and it is by the brevity, clearness, 
charm, or emphasis of the second that we judge the 
strength and fitness of the first. . . . That style 
is therefore the most perfect, not, as fools say, which is 
the most natural in the disjointed babble of the chronicler; 
but which attains the highest degree of elegant and preg- 
nant implication unobtrusively; or, if obtrusively, then 
with the greatest gain to sense and vigor. . . . 1 

What argument is to exposition plot is to dramatic 
narrative; and, less exactly, the single effect corresponds 
to the pattern. For argument is the logical, and plot the 
historical or psychological sequence of developing items; 
and this same sequence, in its influence upon the reader, 
produces in him the impression of a fabric uniquely 
definite in texture and hue. This influence has long been 
called style and has been treated as an independent 
existence (which it is not). It is merely the dynamic 
phase of the writer's ideas. It is just as good and just 
as bad as those ideas; and, what is more to the point, 
it inhabits the very words and phrases which they do. 
And the producing of it is identical with the task of 
selecting and ordering the items of the story that will 
yield a single dramatic impression. This task I call 
integration. 

4. Integration: what it is not Integration, or the 
working up of parts into a whole, has been overdone in 
two directions; once toward the ideal of drama, and 
again toward that of the single effect. In the latter in- 
stance, Poe and not a few writers of l atmosphere' and 
complication, aiming only to arouse a certain thrill, a par- 
ticular quality of emotion, have so far succeeded that 
whatever drama their stories may hold potentially goes 
lost in the glare of the sensuous explosion. On the 
other hand, some writers who follow Howells, James, 

1 On Style in Literature. 



WHAT SHALL YOU SAY ABOUT IT? 89 

et al, subordinate all the elements to the evolution of the 
leading character. This practice has gained a certain 
orthodoxy in contemporary story technique. "In a well 
appointed story/' we are told, "not only must every- 
thing that happens grow naturally out of the situation, 
but it must seem to be the only thing that could happen 
under the circumstances." 1 This is the ideal of that 
miscalled psychological realism, of recent vogue, whose 
eyes are fixed only on the play of the inevitable movings 
in human nature. 

Now, all the errors of technique in these two directions 
are due, not to lack of artistic insight, but to the prior 
choosing of a too narrow ideal. The artist applies to 
stories at large the special devices of integration which per- 
fect the kind of story he likes to tell; and, finding this is 
good, he fancies that he has come upon the recipe for all 
good story telling. The truth is, though, that the short 
story has no recipe; it has only principles. Its integration 
is not definable in terms of any single fixed relation be- 
tween character and action, or situation and climax. And 
it is not, for the excellent reason that these factors them- 
selves do not sustain a constant relation to one another. 
In many a complication story, for instance, there is no 
development of character, and in many a character story 
the complication is trifling. Therefore what Poe tells us 
about unifying the complication is, as a universal rule, 
quite as wrong as what Howells advises us to do by way of 
focussing upon the inner growth of the hero. 

5. Integration: what it is. That integration is a 
principle rather than a formula appears as soon as we 
inspect the nature of narrative. A moment ago we 
compared narrative with exposition, pointing out that 
the latter is knit up according to logical principles, and 
the former according to psychological principles. Now, 

1 Charity Dye, The Story Teller's Art, 34. 



90 SHORT STORY WRITING 

integration in expository writing is nothing more than 
the selecting and ordering of facts in such manner that 
they prove the main thesis. Of course, you cannot 
state the form of their connection in terms of special 
facts; you cannot say, for instance, that you must begin 
with generalities and proceed to particular instances, or 
that your first proposition should hint at the final premise. 
Far from it ! There is only one rule, and that is that the 
order, as well as the choice, of facts is fixed by the logical 
effect you wish to produce. And the principle of order 
and choice is that of implication. 

Much the same situation occurs in narrative, but with 
one very important difference. And that difference 
springs from the fact that the aim of narrative is more 
various than that of exposition. Exposition aims only 
to prove. Narrative aims to produce the feeling proper to 
a given idea. And this feeling varies with the idea; 
that is, it varies with the matter of fact. But there are 
many, many feelings; many sentiments, many emotions. 
This gives us a situation quite different from that in 
logic, which has at bottom onfy two types of proof; 
namely the deductive and the quasi-proof by probability. 
This difference is very profound, but we cannot here 
analyze it further, for it would soon carry us far into 
abstruse philosophy. Accept it as a fact, with the further 
qualification that, in narrative, the effect is produced by 
the particular quality of the facts ordered, no less than 
by their order and choice; whereas in exposition the 
effect is produced wholly by the logical relation of the 
data, and is utterly indifferent to their particular quality. 
Thus, it is all the same to the logical effect whether I 
prove that A is B by showing that all A is M and all 
M is B; or by showing that all A is P, and all P is B; or 
that all A is X and all X is B. The outcome is identical 
in all cases. Not so in narrative, though. It makes all 






WHAT SHALL YOU SAY ABOUT IT? 91 

the difference in the world to the psychological effect 
as to the particular events wherewith I may show that 
Jones is a brave man. I might show it by exhibiting 
him in the act of defying his wife's request to tend to 
the furnace; or again by his carrying a cripple out of a 
burning building. In both instances you might sense 
his courage, but , how unlike your emotions would 
be! 

From all this it follows that, in order to integrate a 
given set of items, you must first fix sharply the particular 
single effect at which you are aiming. For instance, 
suppose you wish to write a story about a wife who falls 
in love with a young friend of her stolid, unkind husband 
and, for honor's sake, diverts the youth's attention to 
another woman. 1 This event, in its bald outline, has no 
single quality. It has many potential qualities. To 
name only two: it might be posed as as to bring out pre- 
dominantly the animal pliability of the young lover in 
the wife's hands, in which case the single effect would be 
comedy, mildly cynical; or again, it might be turned so as 
to throw into relief the tremendous moral courage of the 
wife, who, though mismated and wretched, rejects 
for honor's sake this belated chance of happiness; and 
with this turn pathos, tragedy, and moral exaltation would 
stir the reader. Now, is it not clear that the. incidents you 
would choose to tell the story in the first way would not be 
the incidents which you would pick for the second narra- 
tive? And the arrangements would differ too. We com- 
monly say that 'the same event' is either pathetic or tragic 
or ludicrous; but this is not accurate. It is more accurate 
to say that an event has many different bearings and 
relations, and that these latter, taken singly and ex- 

1 This subject has lately been handled with sincerity and charm 
by Fannie Heaslip Lea, in her story, entitled Mrs. Kilborn's Sister. 
Harper's, June, 1912. 



92 SHORT STORY WRITING 

hibited apart, are in one case comic, in another tragic, 
and so on. So it is that, from a series of highly intricate 
happenings, the writer must select and arrange with an 
eye to the sentiment or mood he wishes to make dominant. 



SECTION II. INTEGRATIVE INTENSIFIERS 

If the remarks of the preceding section are correct, they 
urge the writer of stories to busy himself with all the 
materials and relations figuring in his prospective fiction 
and to seek in each of these the factors, groupings, and 
qualities which intensify the single effect he is, in the 
particular case, aiming at. All this is the task of dis- 
covering integrators, and it is, I shall maintain, the 
supreme problem of technique. To it we now address 
ourselves. 

1. What is intensity? It is worth while to ask just 
what this intensity of effect is which the story teller seeks. 
Singleness of effect is readily comprehended; but I 
venture to say that few persons know quite what they 
mean by the adverb when they say, for instance, that a 
story is 'intensely' pathetic. And yet, in the clear under- 
standing of this one word lies the key to many mysteries 
of technique. Indeed, I think we may safely say more: 
it holds the master key. For intensity is the very soul 
of the short story, distinguishing it from the novel and 
most lesser forms of prose narrative. 

There is at least one characteristic common to all inten- 
sities, from that of the simplest sense impression up to that 
of enjoying Ibsen. Each of them is the amount of a certain 
quality cognized in a single instant. This sounds very 
abstruse, but it is a fact to which a few simple observations 
readily lead any one who will take pains to make them. 
Suppose you listen to a note on a piano, struck now softly 



WHAT SHALL YOU SAY ABOUT IT? 93 

and then loudly. You say, of course, that the second 
sound is more intense than the first; and, if pressed for the 
meaning of your judgment, you promptly add that the 
louder tone, while identical with the softer in pitch, timbre, 
and other qualities, differs from it in that it is somehow 
'bigger', or contains more of the pitch and timbre. Or, 
again, look at two lights of precisely the same shade of 
red, one of which has double the other's brilliancy. Do 
you not see more red in the brighter? Not a greater area 
of red, to be sure, but rather more of the red in the same 
area. We need not ask here how a color can be packed 
more thickly or thinly. Leave that worry to the physi- 
cists and metaphysicians. Enough to observe it is packed, 
that all other cognizable qualities also are, and that this 
peculiar condensation is what we call intensity. With 
these facts in hand, we may look at the more intricate 
literary instances of the same phenomenon. 

Insofar as the artistic effect of a story is concerned, a 
quality is present to us just as long as its specific feeling- 
tone lingers in our consciousness, influencing our mood and 
the course of our thoughts. For it is this feeling-tone 
and not the full presence of the quality itself, that counts 
in shaping our impressions. Touching this matter, com- 
mon speech is quite accurate when it says, of an evil odor 
or a painful thought or a happy discovery, that 'it stays 
with us' long after it has gone. The paradox is, like most 
others, merely verbal; the fact it states is very sure. 
Things do survive in their own effects. 

Hence it is that, at each moment of our lives, a multi- 
tude of things experienced in their pristine qualities a 
long time before is tinging all our sentiments. What 
these things are and how great their number is, nobody 
knows; but there is abundant psychological evidence to 
prove their host is great. The brilliant French philoso- 
pher, Bergson, believes that every minutest trifle a man 



94 SHORT STORY WRITING 

has ever experienced 'stays with him' throughout his 
entire life; and this is not so absurd as it first seems. 
But, once more, we must leave that sort of question to the 
scientists. The lesser truth is quite enough for us, for it 
discloses the origin of art's most potent charms. This 
origin is in the coming together of many similar things in a 
single apprehension. 

Each thing sets up its own definite feeling in the person 
apprehending it; and similar things induce similar feelings. 
Now let these feelings occur simultaneously, and the 
result will be precisely that which we note in the brighter 
light and the louder sound. Each complex impression 
will contain more of one and the same quality, and this 
increase will be the quality intensified. Consider the 
most relevant of instances, fictional narrative, and let us 
choose the most conspicuously intense specimen of it, 
The Fall of the House of Usher. The opening paragraph 
of this abnormal fantasy forms a single impression, by 
which I mean that the reader virtually carries it all in 
mind at once. While reading the last phrases, the effects 
of the first still vibrate in him with horrible vividness; 
hence, in his own consciousness, the picture is one and 
instantaneous. Now, what is there in this picture? 
What feelings are awakened? Well, there are only two 
v/hich sweep through the whole of it ; insufferable gloom 
and mystery. And it is the former alone which is intensi- 
fied with that incredible excess of diabolical skill which 
places Poe forever in a class by himself. Look away 
from the larger ideas of the passage; look only at the items. 
In the first twenty lines, we come upon these words: dull, 
dark, soundless, autumn, clouds, oppressively, low, alone, 
dreary, shades of evening, melancholy, insufferable gloom, 
unrelieved, sternest, desolate, terrible, bleak, vacant, 
utter depression of soul, hideous, bitter lapse, iciness, 
sinking, sickening, unredeemed dreariness, goading, tor- 



WHAT SHALL YOU SAY ABOUT IT? 95 

ture. . . . One word in every six throughout the passage 
thunders the mood with hypnotizing iteration! 

Of course, their mere stringing together does not produce 
intense gloom; but the result comes when they are all 
focussed and integrated into one scene or episode which is 
readily grasped in its unity. And it is precisely this 
focussing and integration which Poe has achieved, and 
toward which every writer with high ideals strives. The 
learner's duty is to discern those manipulations of form 
and material which focus, integrate, and thus intensify 
the single effect of dramatic narrative. 

2. The general rule for intensification. If intensity is 
the amount of a given quality per impression, the general 
method of intensifying is therewith revealed. We may 
state it thus: 

Having chosen the single effect which is to be stressed, the 
writer must select and report only those features of the char- 
acters, the setting and the complication which produce that 
effect. And, if some features necessary to the coherent telling 
of the story do not produce the effect, they must be reported 
as colorlessly as possible, in order that they may not yield 
an antagonistic impression. 

Here we have, in new guise, the ancient and familiar 
rule of relevancy. Usually this has been applied chiefly 
to argumentation, and lately to plot; but it properly 
governs absolutely every detail of narrative. What its 
dictates are, we must now inquire. 

Every element of a story may, of course, serve to 
heighten the total effect. But there are five kinds which 
do so in a superlative degree. They are: 

1. The dominant character. 

2. The plot action. 

3. The order of events. 



96 SHORT STORY WRITING 

4. The point of view 

(a) toward the story (artist's attitude). 

(b) within the story (angle of narration). 

5. The atmosphere. 

These elements demand such extensive analyses that 
each must be discussed in a separate chapter. 



THE DOMINANT CHARACTER 97 



SUB-CHAPTER A. — THE DOMINANT CHARACTER 

In handling this element, we have to bear in mind 
four rules: 

1. Eliminate every trait and deed which does not help 
peculiarly to make the character's part in the particular 
story either intelligible or more open to such sympathy 
as it merits. 

2. Do not describe a trait or feature or other peculiarity 
if it can be portrayed in action that is relevant. 

3. Paint in only the 'high lights'; that is: 

a. Never employ a commonplace or merely accurate 
incident or other detail, if an unusual or acutely charac- 
teristic one can be found to depict the same trait equally 
well. 

b. Never qualify or elaborate a trait or episode, merely 
for the sake of preserving the effect of the character's full 
reality. 

4. Depict in their true proportion all three phases of 
conduct, namely, i. sensing the crucial situation, ii. de- 
liberating over its solution, and Hi. solving it by decisive 
action. 

Comments on these. 

1. This rule of dramatic economy is a result of the 
peculiar structural limitations of the short story, and 
marks the latter off most sharply from the novel. Unlike 
the novelist, the story-teller makes no attempt to give us 
a panorama of life, in all its perplexing intricacy and 
fulness. His is the humbler aim, to render some one 
little scene perfectly. He does not hang together all his 
impressions, conjectures, and wishes about the world, 
weld them into a huge Weltanschauung, and project 
them into language in the form of a story about an 
/ 



98 SHORT STORY WRITING 

imaginary society, as Balzac did. To attempt this 
through the short story would be as foolish as to try 
telling the history of the United States in one sen- 
tence. 

The ultimate reason for the rule is that the short 
story has no words to spare for non-essentials, and the 
only essentials in its character drawing are intelligibility 
and sympathetic portrayal of the one trait which figures 
dramatically in it. 

2. The second rule is also deduced from the condi- 
tions set by the double ideal. It appears most clearly 
in the character story. The single effect of such a 
story is produced through the dominant character. Also, 
this character figures conspicuously in the action. Now, 
the intensest effect will be produced if the character, in one 
and the same deed, both exhibits his own nature relevantly 
and advances the plot action. This combination is the 
dramatic one par excellence; and it is powerful, not be- 
cause it is drama, but because it is intense. And it is 
intense in that it produces a strong effect per unit im- 
pression. 1 

3. The rule of 'high lights* puts the beginner to his 
severest test. He usually has trouble distinguishing it 
from the rule of dramatic economy; and, having over- 
come this difficulty, he encounters still greater ones in 
practicing the rule. For this, I fear, critics and their 
text-books are largely to blame, in that they have stressed 
overmuch the virtues of briefness and simplicity. George 
Henry Lewes, for instance, makes these the first two 
of what he calls the five virtues of narrative fiction; 2 
Frank Norris urges the young writer to contemplate the 
wonderful brevity of the Bible 'stories'; 3 and Esenwein 

1 Cf . above, on the nature of intensity. 

2 Principles of Success in Literature. 
8 The Responsibilities of the Novelist. 






THE DOMINANT CHARACTER 99 

assures him rather vaguely that ' compression must 
pervade the whole plot.' l Did these (and other) writers 
elsewhere call attention sharply to the nature and tech- 
nique of significant characterization, all might be well. 
But they do not. The result is that the learner readily 
imagines he is delineating character successfully if he 
says the fewest possible things about his hero, or if, 
following Esenwein, he "seizes upon a salient charac- 
teristic and makes it stand for the whole, leaving the 
reader to fill in the details from imagination." 2 

a. Unfortunately, 'high lights' may usually be rendered 
with great brevity and simple speech; and so people, 
misled by externals, fail to distinguish them from these, 
their incidental forms of expression. It is easy to show, 
though, that it is neither brevity nor simplicity of action 
which brings out character. 

Let us suppose that we are to depict the truthfulness 
of Georgie Washington. We write as follows at the 
crucial situation: 

Mrs. Washington thrust her stately head out of the 
kitchen window and gazed thoughtfully at her son: 
"Georgie!" she asked, "have you given the cat her 
cream yet?" Georgie, in the very act of pouring the thick 
fluid into Tabby's saucer, looked his mother straight in 
the eye and answered without a quaver: "Yes, mother! 
I cannot tell a lie! I have fed the cat." 

It is greatly to be feared that historians would not 
accept this as overwhelming proof that Georgie was con- 
stitutionally above all prevarication. And yet, he did 
tell the truth, didn't he? You observe his veracity in 
action, don't you? It is simple, brief, and swift, too, 
isn't it? It therefore possesses the virtues which the 
literary authorities call for. Evidently, then, these 

1 Writing the Short Story. 
2 Loc. cit., 232. 



100 SHORT STORY WRITING 

virtues do not fill the bill. And we see what they lack, 
the very instant we contrast the above effusion with the 
classical narrative: 

" George!" his father sternly demanded, as he con- 
templated the prone ruin of his favorite cherry tree, 
"who chopped this down?" 

"Father!" spoke up George firmly and without hesita- 
tion, " I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little hatchet." 

Now the youth tells the truth under circumstances 
which make a white lie much more comfortable and easy. 
A dilemma confronts him; either he must sacrifice the 
temporary well-being of certain peripheral nerves or 
else he must offer up a moral ideal on the altar of hedon- 
ism. And his conduct in this crisis shows what manner of 
lad he is. His character is intelligible and open to our 
sympathy. Thus the narrative fulfils the first two rules 
of integration. But the third rule remains to be obeyed. 
The 'high lights' have not been turned on. The story 
could scarcely be delivered with intensely dramatic 
effect. Telling the painful, perilous truth to an angry 
father reveals a genuine love of truth, but it does not 
force us to believe that Georgie is the incarnation of 
probity. It is not inconceivable, we fear, that even such 
an exemplary youth might swerve from accuracy, for a 
consideration — say fifty dollars. In other words, the 
crisis over the cherry tree, genuine and earnest though 
it is, lacks the gravity necessary to show the hero to be 
through-and-through truthful. To sketch such a crisis 
would be to turn on the high lights of dramatic narrative. 
We should have to see the hero in some desperate predica- 
ment, where truth telling would jeopardize his dearest, 
deepest wish or his whole future. And he should clearly 
sense this danger, tremble before it, and yet tell the truth. 

Let us put the matter in another way. It is not 



THE DOMINANT CHARACTER 101 

enough to show a character doing something consistent 
with that trait which you seek to exhibit. The merely 
consistent deed does not persuade. And the reason for 
this lies underneath art; it is imbedded in the nature of 
things. The merely consistent act, of itself, is logically 
incapable of proving character. Logically, I say. And 
it can be demonstrated, thus: 

The truthful man always tells the truth even to his 
own injury. 

Georgie once told the truth and thereby injured 
himself. 

Conclusion: None. 

You see now, I trust, why a random consistent deed 
is unconvincing. Once is not always. Therefore, in 
order that we may be persuaded that he will always 
do so, we must witness him telling the truth under circum- 
stances which make the same habit easy and natural for him 
under all other circumstances. If a man tells the truth 
when doing so costs him a dollar loss, he may not do so 
when it costs him a hundred. But if he does it when it 
costs him a hundred, we are sure that he will do it when it 
costs him only a dollar. This is no subtle esthetic princi- 
ple peculiar to artistic technique. It is plain common 
sense, as most other principles will turn out to be, once 
we have carefully analyzed them. 

Finally, the necessity for 'high lights' is strengthened 
by the fact that the quality of the information we have 
about a person tends to penetrate and fuse with the image 
of the person which we build up out of this information. 
If we know only petty facts about a man, the man is 
in danger of appearing petty to us, even though the facts 
do not imply such a character. For instance, were you 
to say that Roosevelt's teeth gleam as large and as numer- 
ously as the tombstones of his political enemies, your 
hearers would never quite rid themselves of this de- 



102 SHORT STORY WRITING 

scription. And whoever learned only such trifles would 
frame a picture of an insignificant, ridiculous, or con- 
temptible person. 

In this, once more, there is nothing strange. We judge 
people in the light of what we know about them. That 
is the whole secret, the only secret. It is because of this 
alone that one may damn with faint praise. It is be- 
cause of this alone that the bravest and noblest may 
easily be made to seem ordinary and even despicable 
not by lies but by small truths. Washington flirted 
scandalously with servant girls, Lincoln was at times 
foul-mouthed, Thomas Aquinas was a glutton; and so, by 
citing such facts, it is easy for any shallow iconoclast to 
make his dupes believe these great men were of the com- 
monest clay. And this possibility becomes a peril to the 
literary artist who thinks only of accuracy and consistent 
character drawing. 

The artistic material is that which persuades; and the 
persuasive is not the merely true or consistent, but rather 
the acutely characteristic, namely that which unequivo- 
cally reveals a nature which can be counted on to be 
constant under all circumstances. The discovery of 
such decisive marks is almost a science by itself, a science 
moreover in which few are versed. Do you know what 
is the sure test of a coward? Or of a spoiled child? 
Or of a dreamer? Or of a hypocrite? Or of a cruel 
man? Or of a flirt? Or of a saint? Ca*ri you describe a 
situation in which any one of these characters discloses 
itself past all misunderstanding? If so, you can write a 
powerful short story. 

b. The second rule of 'high lights' is little more than 
a corollary of the first. Young writers are steeped in 
the superstition that, for reality's sake, they must ex- 
plain who the hero's grandparents were, how he came to 
live in the town, why he went to work in the shirt factory, 



THE DOMINANT CHARACTER 103 

where he first met his beloved, and all the other incidents 
prior to the climax. The sufficient answer to this mis- 
belief has been given: most of those episodes are petty, 
in comparison with the plot, and hence, if told, will 
inevitably dilute the latter wofully; and, secondly, they 
are not characteristic of any trait that develops in the 
plot, and hence do not persuade the reader of anything 
in particular. 

(4) The last rule of character drawing, to which we now 
come, is by all odds the most important. It is also the 
one which demands, for its understanding, the maturest 
insight. Merely to explain it is to write a short Essay on 
Man. 

a. The mark of human nature. Philosophers used to 
say that the soul of man was a trinity, whose members 
were feeling, intellect, and will. Each, said they, was 
ultimate, irreducible, and unique. Feeling was not a 
kind of thinking, nor was thinking a species of volition. 
For all their difference, however, all three faculties "worked 
in wonderful unison; and the problem of life was the 
problem of balancing their activities. 

Modern science discards this pretty scheme, but it 
preserves its truth. Today we recognize that man is an 
organism which adjusts itself in many manners to vicissi- 
tudes, and that what marks him off most sharply from all 
other animals is his reflective foresight The ape has feel- 
ings, and the ape acts; but between his feelings and his 
conduct there is little or no control. The creature does 
not check and postpone his impulsive responses, in order 
to consider whether they will redound to his own future 
good. Nor does he seek out the consequences of an 
impending act and anticipate its pleasure or pain. But 
this is the very gist of human life. Insofar as a man acts 
on impulse, he is not exhibiting the power which dis- 
tinguishes him from lower animals. Of course, he may 



104 SHORT STORY WRITING 

be a man in a purely zoological sense, even though he 
habitually fails to ponder and look ahead; just as he 
might be a biped, though paralyzed in both legs. But 
he would impress nobody as human. We should say of 
him: "What a brute!" And the epithet would not be 
poetic license, but sober fact. 

Now, when we speak of character, we refer to just this 
same reflective foresight in its actual operations. There 
is no difference between human character and the charac- 
teristically human. To be sure, the former phrase is 
often used eulogistically, whereas the latter has a cold, 
scientific sound; but this is a mere accident of language. 
It is impossible to lay a finger upon a quality which is 
included within the one and not within the other. Di- 
gesting meat is not a power of human character, for it is 
not characteristically human. Singing is not an affair 
of human character, for larks and cuckoos sing. Having 
feelings and emotions is not a sign of human character 
for certainly dogs and cats fall into a panic, know jealousy, 
and there runs through some of them even a queer little 
shred of loyalty. 

b. Analysis of character. Let us analyze briefly the con- 
duct of one endowed with this unique reflective foresight. 
We find that there are three stages in it. First, a man 
finds himself in a situation which makes trouble for him; 
and he must sense this trouble feelingly. He may be 
thwarted in a desire, or brought into pain. Secondly, he 
plans to escape the difficulty; and, in planning, he looks 
ahead to the probable outcome of each project which he 
considers. Against his private wishes he weighs the effects 
of gratifying them. Against the demands of other 
people he sets what he deems to be his rights. Against 
his own bad habits he arrays his better knowledge. 
Having done this, he finishes off the affair with a de- 
cisive act. And it is this act which, when judged in the 



THE DOMINANT CHARACTER 105 

light of the circumstances, reveals the precise degree and 
quality of control which the man's reflective mind ex- 
ercises over his career. The character of this man is 
nothing more nor less than the management of just these 
inter-playing impulses, appetites, feelings, foresights, 
and arguments. In his adjustment of these forces, he 
shows himself as in no other way. 1 

Let us call these three stages of rational behavior 
respectively the immediate response to the difficulty, 
the reflective delay, and the active solution. We may 
now state a little more formally the fundamental fact 
about them which gives form and body to the whole 
technique of character drawing: 

Character, being the particular proportion and relation of 
these three activities, is not determined by any one or two of 
them. Hence, to depict it unambiguously, all three must 
be shown in their particular relation under the given, cir- 
cumstances. 2 

Or, to put the case more bluntly; the finest analysis of 
a hero's emotions and yearnings will not tell us decisively 
what manner of man he is, nor will his thoughts do so, 
nor will his deeds alone. To demonstrate this and at 
the same time to show that perfect character drawing 
involves the three-phase integration just described, I 
shall cite a few passages from Maupassant's little master- 
piece, A Coward, which the student should carefully 
review at this point. 

The three phases here are very obvious. The insult 
passed to the viscount's guests gives rise at once to the 
dramatic difficulty, and to this difficulty the viscount 

*For an exhaustive analysis of this performance, read John 
Dewey's How We Think and Dewey and Tufts' Ethics (Henry Holt, 
1908) ; especially chapters 3 and 10 of the latter book. 

2 An important qualification of this rule will soon be noted; 
cf. 112. 



106 ' SHORT STORY WRITING 

responds immediately. This response gives rise to a 
further complication, the challenge. Then begins the 
reflective delay, during which the viscount's impulses, 
feelings, notions of propriety, anticipations, and unsus- 
pected physical reactions fight among themselves for the 
control of the decisive solution of his difficulty. At the 
height of their battle, one wins; and the act comes in a 
twinkling. Here are some illuminating incidents from 
each phase: 

The immediate response. 

The young woman continued, half smiling, half vexed: 
'It is very unpleasant. That man is spoiling my ice.' 

The husband shrugged his shoulders: 'Pshaw! Don't 
pay any attention to him. . . . ' 

The viscount had risen abruptly. He could not 
suffer that stranger to spoil an ice which he had offered. 
. He walked toward the man and said: 'You 
have a way of looking at those ladies, monsieur, which I 
cannot tolerate. I beg you to be so kind as to stare less 
persistently.' . . . The gentleman answered but 
one word, a foul word. . . . Profound silence, 
ensued. Suddenly a sharp sound cracked in the air. 
The Viscount had slapped his adversary. Everyone 
rose to interfere. Cards were exchanged between the two. 

The reflective delay. 

When the viscount had returned to his apartment, he 
paced the floor for several minutes with great, quick 
strides. He was too much agitated to reflect. A single 
thought hovered over his mind — 'a duel' — without 
arousing any emotion whatsoever. . . . Then he 
sat down and began to consider. He must find seconds 
in the morning. Whom should he choose? . 
He discovered that he was thirsty, and he drank three 
glasses of water in rapid succession. Then he resumed 
his pacing of the floor. He felt full of energy. If he 
blustered a little, seemed determined to carry the thing 
through, demanded rigorous and dangerous conditions, 
insisted upon a serious duel, very serious and terrible, his 
adversary would probably back down and apologize. 



THE DOMINANT CHARACTER 107 

He picked up the card. . . . 'Georges Lamil, 
51 Rue Moncey.' Nothing more. He examined these 
assembled letters, which seemed to him mysterious, 
full of vague meaning. Georges Lamil! Who was this 
man? What was his business? Why had he stared at the 
lady in such a way? . . . There arose within him 
a fierce anger against that bit of paper — a malevolent 
sort of rage blended with a strange feeling of discomfort. 
What a stupid business! He took a penknife that lay 
open to his hand and stuck it through the middle of the 
printed name, as if he were stabbing some one. 

The active solution. 

So he was really going to fight! It was no longer 
possible for him to avoid it. What on earth was taking 
place within him? He wanted to fight; his purpose and 
determination to do so were firmly fixed; and yet he 
knew full well that, despite all the effort of his mind and 
all the tension of his will, he would be unable to retain 
even the strength necessary to take him to the place of 
meeting. . 

1 From time to time his teeth chattered with a little dry 
noise. He tried to read, and took up Chateauvillard's 
duelling code . . . 

As he passed a table, he opened the case by Gastinne 
Renette, took out one of the pistols, and then stood as if 
he were about to fire, and raised his arm. But he was 
trembling from head to foot, and the barrel shook in 
all directions. 

Then he said to himself: 'It is impossible. I cannot 
fight like this!' 

He regarded the little hole, black and deep, at the end 
of the barrel, the hole that spits out death. He thought 
of the dishonor, of the whispered comments at the clubs, 
of the laughter in the salons, of the disdain of the women, 

He continued to gaze at the weapon, and, as he raised 
the hammer, he saw the priming glitter beneath it like 
a little red flame. . . . And he experienced a con- 
fused, inexplicable joy thereat. 

If h? did not display in the other's presence the calm 
and noble bearing suited to the occasion, he would be lost 
forever. . . . And that calm and bold bearing 



108 SHORT STORY WRITING 

he could not command — he knew it, he felt it. And yet 
he was really brave, because he wanted to fight ! He was 
brave, because — The thought that grazed his mind was 
never completed; opening his mouth wide, he suddenly 
thrust the barrel of the pistol into the very bottom of his 
throat and pressed the trigger. 

So closely does Maupassant cling to the pure psycholog- 
ical truth here that many readers find the marvelous little 
story bald and hard. There is no sympathy in it; if it 
leads you to feel sorry for the poor viscount, it does so 
by its brute facts, not by any persuasion from the author. 
But it is just this crystalline accuracy that makes A 
Coward sl perfect model for students to contemplate. 
The phases of character expansion are as sharply limned, 
the one from its next, as the acts of a play. 

Let us see how the story would have worked out, had 
Maupassant neglected some phase. Suppose, first of 
all, that he had not told us anything definite about the 
viscount's immediate response to the provoking situation. 
Well, that would have virtually halted the telling of the 
tale; for it was the viscount's spontaneous resentment of 
the stranger's impudence that brought on the challenge. 
Not to tell what the viscount did would rob the story of 
the very incident which sets it going. This is not an 
accidental complication of this particular plot. It 
occurs in all stories of character, in greater or less degree. 
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that its oc- 
currence brings the character intimately into the plot 
action and so makes a character story. In this case the 
immediate response belongs to the narrative by definition. 

Now suppose that Maupassant had told us all about 
the encounter in the restaurant and also about the 
viscount's suicide, but not a word about his wonderings 
and waverings, his strange access of panic, his half- 
crazed dreams about the outcome of his grim misad- 



THE DOMINANT CHARACTER 109 

venture, his schemes to rob it of its peril. What then 
of the story? To answer this question, you have .only 
to read the original, omitting the passages which sketch 
the reflective delay. So manipulated, the events shrink 
to a mere episode not a little obscure. A diner who 
stares at the viscount's guests is asked to mind his man- 
ners. He retorts insultingly, and the viscount slaps him. 
The duel is arranged, the viscount chooses his weapon 
and his seconds. The latter call on him, settle the details 
of the contest, and go. A few minutes later, his valet 
rushes in, alarmed by the report of a gun, and finds him 
dead; and beside him on the table a paper bearing only 
these four words: 'this is my WilP. 

That is a mystery story, isn't it? And an ill-hung one 
too, for it does not solve the puzzle of the viscount's 
suicide. What has happened, anyhow? The viscount is 
plainly a bold, firm man. Did he not walk straight up 
to the insulter in the restaurant? Did he not accept 
the fellow's card? Did he not insist upon the most serious 
form of duel? Did his seconds not find him calm? Well, 
then! there's something behind all this affair, something 
dark and wicked ! Perhaps Georges Lamil was the prodigal 
brother of the viscount's guest, and the lady begged the 
viscount to break off the duel and save her family from 
notoriety. Perhaps the fellow was a hired assassin — 
or maybe the affair was all a hoax, to test the viscount's 
courage, and the viscount, discovering it, was humiliated. 

Or — but there are as many guesses as there are readers, 
and every one of them remains unsubstantiated. We 
shall never know whether the viscount was a hero or a 
coward or the victim of persecution or the butt of a 
ghastly practical joke or something else. 

Finally, suppose that Maupassant had said nothing 
about the viscount's consummating deed. Suppose the 
story had ended at the point where the man, having 



110 SHORT STORY WRITING 

picked up a pistol and aimed it across the room, found 
himself trembling from head to foot, and then cried: 
"It is impossible. I cannot fight like this!" Surely the 
story would now be mutilated less than in either of the 
preceding cases. We should at least perceive the vis- 
count's physical cowardice, and we should conjecture 
that he withdrew from the duel and was disgraced thereby. 
But we should not be absolutely sure that he was as 
weak as he felt himself to be, nor that he did not walk 
into the duel, when the appointed hour came, no less 
firmly than he approached his insulter in the restaurant. 
And why shouldn't we? Simply because we know that a 
man's feelings and emotions are not the infallible weather- 
vanes of conduct. They are peculiarly untrustworthy 
symptoms of bravery and cowardice. The most coura- 
geous hero, for instance, is not the man who does not know 
fear. Such a fellow is a dolt, whereas he who commands 
our admiration is the one who, being wracked with 
thoughts of the danger before him, nevertheless nerves 
himself to meet it. So too with the coward. It is not 
what he feels that shows him up; it is what he does after 
reflection. However ill the thought of an approaching 
duel may make him, that does not brand him. But let 
him dodge the consequences of the accepted challenge; 
let him flee not only his adversary but even the painful 
gossip that his behavior will bring down upon him, and 
there you have the finished and unmistakable type. 

We have sketched the elementary pattern of human 
conduct, but we have not indicated the source nor the 
nature of its perpetual novelty and immeasurable variety. 
A profitable study of these would carry us far beyond the 
purposes of this book, so I shall merely suggest a few 
leading facts which the writer of character stories must 
keep in mind. 

The profoundest difference between man and man ap- 



THE DOMINANT CHARACTER 111 

pears in the balance and magnitude of forces at work 
during the reflective delay. In this stage of the dramatic 
struggle the battle is doubtless fought and won, though 
the victory does not appear to the observer — nor, often 
enough, to the man himself — until the decisive act has 
been consummated. Now, the palm is awarded to one 
of three contestants: 1 to impulse, to feeling, or to reason. 
And the particular manner in which the victorious force 
gains the ascendency gives us insight into the soul of the 
particular man. In A Coward this three-cornered 
contest is beautifully clear. Consider this passage, which 
is typical of the entire story: 

"I must be firm," he said. "He will be afraid." 
(Reasoning.) The sound of his voice made him tremble, 
and he looked about him. (Feeling, followed by an im- 
pulse.) He drank another glass of water, then began 
to undress for bed. (Impulse.) . . . He thought: 
"I have all day tomorrow to arrange my affairs. I must 
sleep now, so that I may be calm." (Reasoning.) He 
was very warm under the bed clothes, but he could not 
manage to doze off. ... He was still very thirsty. 
(Feeling.) He got up again to drink. (Impulse.) Then 
a disquieting thought occurred to him: "Can it be that 
I am afraid?" 

Why did his heart begin to beat wildly at every familiar 
sound in the room? (Reasoning.) 

Notice how each power tries in turn to master the 
viscount, and how your own interest centres about the 
steady, insidious onrush of the purely physical collapse 
and the last desperate stand which the poor man's reason 
makes against it. It is in just such conflicts that the 
character story has its being. 

1 The reader versed in psychology will please skim this descrip- 
tion with an indulgent eye. It is a rough outline of the truth. 
For pedagogy's sake, I trust that it is permissible to speak of 
impulse, feeling, and reason as though they were independent enti- 
ties, instead of interlocking processes. 



112 SHORT STORY WRITING 

The reader will easily observe that the three factors 
of this conflict resemble more or less those of the wider 
situation wherein reflective delay is the second phase. 
The immediate response is commonly rich in emotional 
flavor; the reflective delay itself is essentially rational, 
even though reason does not always win out; and the 
active solution is inevitably impulsive in some degree, 
just because it is an act of will. This parallelism is 
not a freak of nature; any psychologist will explain more 
clearly than is here possible how this circumstance is 
due to the very nature of the reflective delay, which is, 
as I have said, nothing but the arena wherein all the 
forces of human nature meet in combat. For us, how- 
ever, the literary aspect of the fact is more significant. 
Briefly, it is this: 

The pattern, or static structure, of a character can be 
adequately depicted by the interplay of forces within the 
reflective delay. But the proof of the pattern, the full 
dramatic evidence of its existence and power in the par- 
ticular person, appears in the active solution that follows 
the reflective delay. 

This is a very important qualification of the rule 
laid down above. 1 And it has a bearing upon the most 
modern, most highly praised mode of fiction, the so- 
called 'psychological story'. 

The psychological story is one which analyzes the feel- 
ings, thoughts, and impulses of its leading characters 
more minutely than does the ordinary dramatic story, 
which is content to describe only as much as might 
normally appear to the eye and ear of a possible spectator. 
In another chapter we shall discuss the advantages and 
disadvantages of the analytical technique; 2 at present 
let us note only the danger of substituting analysis for 

^Cf. 105. 

2 Cf. the section on point of view. 



THE DOMINANT CHARACTER 1 113 

drama. This is a very real peril today, though perhaps 
less so than in the eighties, when Henry James was 
heralded as the discoverer of the real and the ultimate 
in literature. At bottom the danger is precisely the 
one which we have suggested in the above inspection 
of Maupassant's story. It is the danger of letting the 
thought do duty for the deed; that is, substituting for the 
real course of events the hero's stream of consciousness. 
To explain this substitution, we must make another brief 
but arduous excursion into psychology. 

Nature is nowhere more prodigal than in mental life. 
She produces millions more little fish than can ever 
survive in the sea; and she gives birth to hundreds of 
millions of sensations, feelings, and imageries which 
can never develop and become dominant in the directing 
of men's lives. You become aware of this, the instant 
you observe accurately what is going on in your mind. 
Swift, evanescent, and immeasurably complex is the 
flux; and its items of an instant baffle the acutest intro- 
spective cataloguer. Now, this fact is, of itself, enough 
to prove that, when we think about a certain matter, we 
do not think in terms of these elusive and microscopical 
1 mental states'. These are, on the contrary, nothing 
more than our manipulations in adjusting ourselves to the 
situation which concerns us. They bear the same rela- 
tion to thinking as the tugging of a slack-wire walker's 
muscles do to the task of keeping his balance. They 
are responses to the conditions of the pressing problem; they 
are neither the conditions nor the character which responds. 

The literary artist, though, is interested in the dramatic 
aspect of human conduct, not in the mechanism of its 
activity. The latter falls to the professional scientist; 
to the psychological expert and the physiologist. Its 
truthful portraiture affords no greater opportunity for 
fine narrative writing than does an account of the slack- 



114 SHORT STORY WRITING 

wire walker's muscle play. 1 As Aristotle saw, the 
objects of the artist are always 'men in action'. But a 
gush of 'mental states' is no more a man in action than 
a series of writhings is. Action may be the result of 
many sensations and writhings; but, even then, it has a 
singleness, a direction, and a purpose which these, its 
mechanical factors, altogether lack. We are nearer to 
human conduct when we see Smith knock down a 
hoodlum who has insulted him than we are when a 
scientific observer enumerates to us the fifty-seven 
varieties of naughty thoughts which the insult sent 
flitting through Smith's consciousness. To be sure, we 
are not thus brought to an understanding of conduct, 
if by understanding we mean a knowledge of causes. 
But it is not the artist's business to furnish that. He is 
asked to sketch only the broad movement and trend in 
their decisive and illuminating manifestations. The 
single effect, the impressive unity of somebody's behavior, 
is his ideal ; and, to render this, he must abstain from mak- 
ing perceptible in the action what is imperceptible to the 
ordinary competent observer; and from making dramatically 
conspicuous what has little or no efficiency. For of just 
this succession of visible and crucial events does dramatic 
action consist. 

Dangerous as are most analogies between the arts, I 
cannot resist comparing the writings of the extreme 
psychological school to the Dutch microscopical paintings. 
Those freakish little canvases on which we see every 
mesh of a fly's wing and every individual hair in the 
down of a peach betray a confusion of science with art 
in their maker's mind. The correct aim of the painter 

1 The difference between scientific and artistic writing here indi- 
cated is absolute. It springs from a difference in aims. But this 
does not mean that scientific writing must be inartistic in the sense 
of being obscure and clumsy. 



THE DOMINANT CHARACTER 115 

is to present some visible aspect of some real or imaginary 
object. He is free to omit much that is visible, if by so 
doing he vivifies significantly the remainder, as Corot 
does with the blues and grays and Rembrandt with the 
browns and yellows. But he has no right to introduce 
the invisible. This the Dutch microscopist does though 
when he inserts into the scene, not what men perceive 
of the fly and the peach but what wing and down ' really 1 
are. The result must have bewildered the good man, 
for it is singularly dead and unreal to the eye. You 
might fancy that Alice would have seen the like of it, 
had she gone through a magnifying glass instead of 
through the looking glass. His fly and peach are not 
of our world. 

Precisely this effect is all too easily produced in fiction 
by elaborately conscientious analysis of the hero's con- 
sciousness. The reader is forced to notice many minute 
impressions and impulses which neither mould nor ad- 
vance the action at all and hence do not truly charac- 
terize, but only blur, the significance of the portrayed 
conduct. 

There is another serious misunderstanding about 
the so-called 'psychological story' which mars at times 
even the writings of veterans. I have wondered to what 
extent we ought to put the blame of it upon the lexi- 
cographer who defines 'psychological' as meaning 'of 
or pertaining to the human soul and its operations'. 
Certainly it is just this loose, all-inclusive notion which 
confuses technique. A story would, according to it, be 
psychological if it 'pertained' in any way to somebody's 
'mental states'. And so many writers fancy themselves 
dipping deep into the abysses of the soul when they write 
as follows: 'It flashed across her troubled mind', 'on his 
mental horizon a black doubt arose', 'a pang of regret 



116 SHORT STORY WRITING 

smote him', 'the lad wondered long, weighing all the 
direful possibilities of his thought', and so on. 

Such allusions, though, do not make literature psycho- 
logical. They are as powerless to do that as loud curses 
and piercing shrieks are powerless to make an adventure 
story. Curses and shrieks are merely the effects of some 
adventurous encounter; and, being such, they may aid in 
expressing its poignancy. Indicating somebody's reac- 
tion to the adventure, they come to indicate by indirec- 
tion the quality of the adventure itself. They hint at 
a character's point of view toward the latter. And this 
is all that is accomplished by the mental horizons, pangs, 
wondering, and weighing on mental scales about which 
pseudo-psychological writers amplify. They tell a story 
by telling us how its episodes impress some witness or 
participant. 

Now, it often happens that the episodes themselves 
are no more psychological than a thunderstorm or the 
flight of a bird. The hero may be caught in a jam on the 
Subway, or the heroine be spattered with mud by a pass- 
ing automobile. Furthermore, it may be that the crowd 
of travelers or the racing chauffeur figures in the action 
of the story, while the hero's sensations and the heroine's 
thoughts do not. In such a case, the reader's attention 
need not be drawn to these mental states, except insofar as 
they alone can make clear the relevant happenings. 

The genuine psychological story uses 'mental states' 
in a different way. They are not its language; they are 
its subject matter. The working of some human trait is 
depicted, as any simple adventure or love affair might 
be. Maupassant's A Piece of String, Henry James' 
The Liar, and Mrs. Wharton's The Daunt Diana typify 
this undertaking. The first shows us, in their tragic 
interaction, the deeds of an over-shrewd miser who 
cherishes his reputation and of his neighbors who deal 



THE DOMINANT CHARACTER 117 

lightly with it. The second portrays an incorrigible 
drawer of the long bow. The third exhibits the acquisi- 
tive passion and its paradoxical end. Such material 
seldom demands the false psychological manner; its 
narrative can flow along as objectively as a newspaper 
report, and so it often does. Unfortunately, though, 
it often does not; and its failure is nowhere more con- 
spicuous than in some of Howells' stories. 

Howells analyzes human nature's milder moods and 
appetites with sympathetic accuracy; and when he 
does, he produces a sincere, convincing psychological 
story, albeit generally a tame one. But, unfortunately, 
he has associated the psychological manner and language 
with whatever material he writes about; and when the 
latter is not psychological, the resulting narrative suffers. 
The opening of A Circle in the Water mingles the psycho- 
logical manner with the psychological material. The 
former appears at the very outset: 

The sunset struck its hard red light through the fringe 
of leafless trees to the westward, and gave their outlines 
that black definition which a French school of landscape 
saw a few years ago, and now seems to see no longer. In 
the whole scene there was the pathetic repose which we 
feel in some dying day of the dying year, and a sort of 
impersonal melancholy weighed me down as I dragged 
myself through the woods toward that dreary November 
sunset. 

Presently I came in sight of the place I was seeking, and 
partly because of the insensate pleasure of having found it, 
and partly because of the cheerful opening in the boscage 
made by the pool, which cleared its space to the sky, my 
heart lifted. I perceived that it was not so late as I 
had thought, and that there was much more of the day 
left than I had supposed from the crimson glare in the 
west. . 

The phrases of this passage which I have italicized do not 
describe the scene directly, nor do they turn us toward 



118 SHORT STORY WRITING 

some other part of the story proper. They help to give 
us a distinct feeling for the mildly dreary autumnal hour, 
by telling us that somebody was contemplating the sunset, 
and what he felt. The narrator's reminiscences and emo- 
tions are of no account in the drama; they merely assist 
— or are supposed to assist — in lighting up the stage. 
Notice how easily we may cut them out. Smoothing 
over the gaps, we get something like this: 

The sunset struck its hard red light through the fringe 
of leafless trees to the westward, and gave their outline 
a black definition. In the whole scene there was the 
pathetic repose of a dying day in the dying year; and the 
impersonal melancholy of it weighed me down as I 
dragged myself through the November woods. 

Presently I came in sight of the place I was seeking; a 
cheerful opening in the boscage made by the pool, which 
cleared its space to the sky. There was more of the day 
left than the crimson glare in the west betrayed . . . etc. 

Let the student ask himself whether, in this briefer, 
purely objective report, any feature of the original scene 
has gone lost. I think he will find none missing; and if 
he does, it is through my faulty abridging and not be- 
cause of the changed point of view. The truth is, very 
few events that are visible or audible can be made known 
to readers more vividly through the reporter's 'mental 
states' than by means of the bald, common, and obvious 
qualities, manners and consequences of the objective 
items themselves. Indeed, the 'mental state' generally 
turns out to be a pure redundancy, as it is in the above 
passage. When Howells says that in the sunset there was 
the repose which we feel in a dying day, the allusion to tne 
feeling is gratuitous. For everybody knows that repose 
is something which we feel; and to mention the fact in 
finished prose is pretty much like saying 'the color red 
which we see in the rose', when one means 'the red of 



THE DOMINANT CHARACTER 119 

the rose' or 'rose-red'. Or, again, to say: 'I perceived 
that it was not so late as I had thought', when the fact 
of perceiving makes no difference to the story, is not only- 
less elegant, but less true dramatically than to say: 'It 
was not so late as I had thought.' Such psychological 
mannerisms only divert the reader from the plot to the 
narrator, and to that extent falsify the total impression. 1 
Not so, however, with the genuine psychological narra- 
tive whose material is, both by intent and by full dramatic 
right, the world of 'mental states'. When the narrator 
of Howells' story flings himself down 'on one of the 
grassy gradines of the amphitheatre' and muses over the 
mysterious antiquity of the place, he sees not the slight- 
est impulse 'of the life that the thing inarticulately recorded.' 

I began to think how everything ends at last. Love 
ends, sorrow ends, and to our mortal sense everything 
that is mortal ends. . . . Was evil then a greater 
force than good in the moral world? I tried to recall 
personalities, virtuous and vicious, and I found a fatal 
want of distinctness in the return of those I classed as 
virtuous, and a lurid vividness in those I classed 
as vicious. Images, knowledges, concepts, zigzagged 
through my brain, as they do when we are thinking, or 
believe we are thinking; perhaps there is no such thing as 
we call thinking, except when we are talking. . 

1 The first italicized clause in the opening of A Circle in the Water 
(117) may seem far removed from a psychological mannerism. To 
compare the outline of autumnal trees to the effects achieved 
some years ago by certain French painters is, one might insist, a 
sober historical allusion. But I would urge that it is this only in 
appearance. Really it is a private reminiscence, as obscure as it is 
private. It is a random association, and the pictures which the 
landscape suggested to the author have been neither seen nor 
heard of by most readers. The comparison is therefore meaningless 
to most of us. In effect, it is as though Howells had written: "The 
sunset . . . gave their outline a black definition which awoke in me 
the memory of something done by a French school . . . etc". 
Thus revised, the psychological mannerism of it protrudes. 



120 SHORT STORY WRITING 

These reflections and the peculiar flicker of mind that 
accompany them are dramatically perfect. They are not 
dragged in to describe something else. They are made 
known for their own sake and because they count in the 
story. It is this very doubt about the permanence of the 
good and the transiency of evil which is going to work 
itself out in the encounter with Tedham. Indeed, to 
the careful reader, it appears the deeper, more universal 
topic, of which Tedham's adventures are only a dramatic 
exemplification. The difference, therefore, between it 
and the 'I thought's', 'I felt's', and 'I perceived's' of the 
first quoted passage is not one of degree; it is a dif- 
ference of logical and dramatic kind. Never can the 
one be reduced to the other. 



EXERCISES 121 



Exercises 



1. Find the single effect of Kipling's In Flood Time 
(in Black and White). Then analyze the six paragraphs 
of the introduction, separating the items of character, 
complication, and setting. Now point out those which 
heighten the single effect and those which do not. 

2. Does the opening description of setting and 
characters (first nine paragraphs) of Mary Wilkins 
Freeman's A Far- Away Melody (in A Humble Romance) 
heighten the single effect of the story? If not, specify in 
what respects it fails. 

3. Answer the above questions with regard to Mau- 
passant's The Piece of String (first five paragraphs). 

4. In O. Henry's Lost on Dress Parade do you find any 
character trait or deed which does not make Mr. Towers 
Chandler's part in the story intelligible or open to such 
sympathy as it merits? If so, designate it precisely. 

5. In Margaret Deland's Good for the Soul (Old Chester 
Tales) is any character trait or feature described which 
might be more vividly portrayed in direct action? If so, 
designate it. 

6. Can you suggest less commonplace incidents for the 
depicting of Langbourne's eager curiosity in Howells* 
The Magic of a Voice (in A Pair of Patient Lovers)'? 

7. In Mary Wilkins Freeman's A Modern Dragon (in 
A Humble Romance) is any character trait elaborated 
beyond the demands of the story? 

8. Point out the three phases of the leading character's 
conduct in each of the following stories, and state which of 
them, if any, the author has either overdrawn or under- 
drawn: 



122 SHORT STORY WRITING 

a. Poe's The Masque of the Red Death. 

b. George Moore's The Exile (in The Untitled Field). 

c. Kipling's The Phantom 'Rickshaw. 

9. a. Pick out some trait in the following character. 
Find a crucial situation in the events narrated which 
may exhibit that trait. Then work up a plot around it, 
drawing on the given material as much or as little as you 
please. 

b. Get a character story out of the last sentence in the 
news item. 

Ross Raymond, author, war correspondent, and ad- 
venturer, of whom it has been said he was in a palace 
one day and a prison the next, died in Carson, Nev., on 
Thanksgiving Day. 

Raymond's right name was Frank Powers, and Beaver, 
Penn., was the place of his birth. At different times 
Raymond declared that he was the son of a well-known 
officer of the British Army, that he was an ex-officer of 
the British Navy, with a long and honored career behind 
him, and that among his friends were some of the fore- 
most men and women of this country, England, and 
continental Europe. 

Raymond may be said to have begun his varied career 
by entering the United States Navy. After serving a 
time he resigned and then entered the British Navy, and 
after a tour of duty in that service resigned to become a 
correspondent of newspapers. As a correspondent he 
represented in various parts of the world newspapers in 
San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, London, and this 
city. He traveled the world over, and it is said was one 
day in poverty and the next day in luxury. 

At one time Raymond was on the staff of a powerful 
Indian Rajah, while at the time of the bombardment of 
Alexandria he was an officer on the staff of the Khedive 
of Egypt. After his Egyptian career he is charged with 
having impersonated many distinguished men, and for 
these false pretensions he served ten years in an English 



EXERCISES 123 

prison, and is said also to have served a term in prison in 
this country. 

As the press agent of the Khedive Raymond cut a wide 
swath. After the Egyptian war he went to Paris, clad 
in the glittering uniform of an Egyptian officer and sur- 
rounded by a full staff of equally gorgeously clad Egyptian 
subordinates. He announced at the time that the 
Khedive was soon to visit Paris, and engaged whole 
floors in great hotels for the entertainment of that per- 
sonage. He had trays of rarest gems sent to him for in- 
spection, which he is said to have retained pending the 
approval of the purchase by the Khedive. Then he dis- 
appeared. 

When next heard of he was masquerading as a Rajah 
in India. He had a great time in India, and then he 
came back to the United States, and going to Ohio 
learned that his mother was dead. Then he went West. 
His wife stuck to him through it all. 

10. What character trait does G.'s conduct suggest in the 
following episode from the Titanic disaster? If you find 
it equivocal, add such events as will make it clear. 

When the crash came I awakened them and told 
them to get dressed. A few minutes later I went into their 
rooms and helped them to get ready. I put a life pre- 
server on Mr. G. He said it hurt him in the back. There 
was plenty of time and I took it off, adjusted it, and then 
put it on him again. It was all right this time. 

They wanted to go out on deck with only a few 
clothes on, but I pulled a heavy sweater over Mr. G.'s 
lifebelt, and then they both went out. They stayed 
together, and I could see what they were doing. They 
were going from one lifeboat to another, helping the 
women and children. Mr. G. would shout out/ Women 
first,' and he was of great assistance to the officers. 

Things weren't so bad at first, but when I saw Mr. G. 
about three-quarters of an hour after the crash there was 
great excitement. What surprised me was that both 
Mr. G. and his secretary were dressed in their evening 
clothes. They had deliberately taken off their sweaters, 
and as nearly as I can remember they wore no lifebelts 
at all. 



124 SHORT STORY WRITING 

' What's that for?' I asked. 

'We've dressed up in our best,' replied Mr. G., 
'and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.' It was 
then that he told me about the message to his wife and 
that is what I have come here for. 

Well, shortly after the last few boats were lowered 
and I was ordered by the deck officer to man an oar, I 
waved good-bye to Mr. G., and that was the last I saw 
of him and his American secretary. 

11. a. What character traits are at work in the following 
history? Which one seems to have been decisive? 
Having answered these questions, simplify the events so 
as to bring out nothing but the one most important 
trait. 

b. Can either character be made the topic of a short 
story, without profoundly altering the events? 

The woman who was found insane on Monday after- 
noon in the room of Prof. Louis G. Parma, beside the 
dead body of the music master, was identified yesterday 
as Clara Conner of Shelby ville, Ind., a former pupil of the 
professor. 

Prof. Parma kept Miss Conner in seclusion for twenty 
years, providing for her every want and supporting her 
entirely at his expense, that she might not be sent to an 
insane asylum. The old professor had a horror of such 
institutions, and when Miss Connor, one of his most 
promising pupils and a great favorite with the music 
master, lost her reason, he proclaimed to his friends that 
never should the girl, without near relatives or appar- 
ently any kin at all except a cousin, be committed to an 
asylum. 

Prof. Parma was wealthy then. Miss Conner had 
come to his school from her home in Shelbyville and 
from the first she made rapid progress. She hoped to 
win a place on the stage, and the professor predicted a 
great future for her. Then her mind gave way. 

Prof. Parma was broken-hearted, but instantly pro- 
vided a place in his own home for the girl. To strangers 
he never spoke of her, but to his and her friends the 



EXERCISES 125 

professor never made a mystery of the girl's presence 
in his home. He regarded her affliction as a secret of 
hers, and for this reason only he refused to mention her 
to strangers. 

The doctors in Bellevue Hospital can get nothing 
coherent from the woman. In her babblings she has 
talked in at least seven different languages, but never 
connectedly enough to give the authorities any clue to her 
past. 

12. Develop the following into a half-serious character 
story, first designating the single effect, the character 
trait, and the crucial situation. 

Willie Finnegan, 12 years old, and Freddie Rosenberg, 
10 years old, today became tired of a short career as 
thieves and applied to the police to send them to the 
reform school. 

The boys a few nights ago tried to steal the opera 
house bass drum. Next they robbed John P. Flanagan's 
grocery store, and last night stole bottled beer from a 
wagon. They drank some of the beer and today felt 
remorse. 

The police turned the boys over to Probation Officer 
MacWilliam, and Judge Lyon sent them to the reform 
school in Jamesburg. 

13. Read carefully Howells' The Pursuit of the Piano. 
Then strike out from the first chapter every word which 
describes an event or circumstance by recounting Hamil- 
ton Gaites' sensations or thoughts about it. Be very 
careful not to expunge anything that counts in the dramatic 
action. Finally, connect smoothly the surviving passages 
and compare the result with the original with respect 
to (a) vividness, (b) clarity, and (c) dramatic velocity. 



126 SHORT STORY WRITING 



SUB-CHAPTER B. THE PLOT ACTION. 

Important as the plot action is, it makes almost no 
demand upon the writer's knowledge or insight, in 
comparison with the integrative intensifier which we 
have just been studying. To handle it effectively, little 
technical skill is required. It raises only two questions 
worthy of discussion here: the question of directness, 
and the question of necessity. 

1. Directness. Let us first define our terms. Action 
is direct which, in every complication, moves toward the 
crucial situation. Every other kind is indirect in greater 
or lesser degree. 

These qualities of plot action must be carefully dis- 
tinguished from the order of events, with which it is easy 
to confuse them. The plot action is determined by the 
selection of events to be depicted; the order of the selected 
events, while more or less influenced by the selection, is 
a distinct and secondary feature. Almost any story will 
reveal this distinction, but Balzac's A Seashore Drama 
does so with exceptional sharpness. The student will 
please analyze it carefully, in the light of the following 
comments. 

The plot action here is doubly indirect. It begins with 
the reveries and gamboling of the artist narrator and 
Pauline on the Brittany coast, and through the first 
thousand words these persons seem to be the chief char- 
acters. Then the wretched fisherman suddenly appears, 
and for the space of over three thousand words his past 
and present misery unfold. Here at last, the reader 
thinks, is the hero; and the story is about his poverty, 
his filial loyalty, and the solitude of his dull existence. 
But no! The Man of the Vow at last shoots into view, 
and the tale the fisherman tells about him makes us 



THE PLOT ACTION 127 

forget all else. When this terrible seashore drama has 
unrolled, the narrative leaps back across the years to 
the artist and Pauline; and the closing movement por- 
trays the effect of the drama upon them. 

Here, to be sure, is a definite arrangement of episodes. 
But the order itself is quite distinct from the matter 
ordered. The three acts, as it were, might contain 
exactly the same incidents and yet relate them in other 
sequences. Thus, the story might open with the artist 
and Pauline meeting the fisherman. During the mock 
barter over his lobster and crab, all the exuberance of 
the summer visitors' sheer physical joy and all their 
summer fancies might be brought out, though doubtless 
not so successfully as in the arrangement which Balzac 
has chosen. Also, the discovery of Cambremer on his 
granite bowlder might occur in the midst of the artist's 
first encounter with the poor fisherman; and the fisherman 
might tell his own history while telling that of the Man 
with the Vow. (The story would gain much by bringing 
Cambremer into it sooner.) 

No such manipulation affects the plot action. At 
most, it only obscures or clarifies it. To alter the plot's 
dramatic quality, you must delete episodes or insert others. 
This is remarkably easy in A Seashore Drama; inasmuch as 
neither of the first two movements contain integral parts 
of the central plot. Strictly speaking, both of them 
contribute only to the atmosphere and the philosophical 
interpretation. They are pure intensifiers. To state 
this in the language of the definitions above laid down: 
they are indirect action, inasmuch as neither the artist 
nor Pauline nor the fisherman do anything which makes 
Cambremer drown his profligate son. 

a. Two indirections. Two varieties of indirect action 
are conspicuous; first, that which introduces secondary 
complications (sub-plots) in order to reach the climax; and, 



128 SHORT STORY WRITING 

secondly, that which proceeds by developing a character in 
a manner that conceals the line of action from the reader 
for a while. Gouverneur Morris' story, Sapphira, con- 
tains indirect action in the form of a sub-plot, which is pe- 
culiarly unsuccessful inasmuch as the minor action 
almost overwhelms the major. The title indicates that 
the benevolent liar, Miss Tennant, is the dominant 
character and consequently that the events centering 
about and springing from her fibs constitute the plot. 
But the adventures of David Larkin, particularly his love 
affair with Another Lady, do much more than bring 
out Miss Tennant's embarrassments; they make one 
forget these altogether. A Circle in the Water is doubly 
indirect action. It introduces a secondary complication 
(which, in this case, can scarcely be called a sub-plot) 
and it also proceeds by developing the leading character, 
Tedham, while suppressing the plot action in the earlier 
movement. Mr. and Mrs. March extraneously make 
difficult the convict's home-coming and his meeting his 
daughter. Tedham's reestablishment in his daughter's 
affections and in society could, so far as the dramatic 
necessities of the affair are concerned, have been ac- 
complished without most of the elaborate debates and 
interpositions of the Marches. While these do figure 
in the action, they serve chiefly to accentuate the public 
hostility toward ex-convicts and the deeper charity of 
the Marches, which feebly struggles to masquerade 
under the guise of sternness. The two indirections shoot 
through the entire narrative; and their joint effect is 
especially powerful in the first movement, which runs 
on through fifteen hundred words without betraying 
anything about the leading characters and the com- 
plication. 

b. The use of direct and of indirect action. The illustra- 
tions we have just considered suggest perhaps that only 



THE PLOT ACTION 129 

direct action is altogether praiseworthy. But this is 
not true, though it is much more nearly so in the out- 
and-out character story than elsewhere. Which method 
is better depends upon the particular effect sought; and 
the fundamental principle which decides its fitness is 
the principle of integration. Thus, if we were writing 
a thematic story, we should not ask ourselves which 
events in our material are the most exciting, or which 
rush on to the climax most swiftly. Rather should we 
seek those which more uniformly and most vividly 
illuminate the theme. And if, again, we were composing 
an adventure story whose supreme thrill sprang from pure 
surprise, we should not choose a plot structure with an 
eye to its character drawing or its moral or anything else 
save that startling denouement. 

We may sum up these observations in several practical 
rules: 

Like every other factor, episodes may be intensifiers 
of whatever single effect the writer aims at. Now, of 
course, all those which are integral parts of the plot must 
be reported and suitably developed, lest the action be 
vague. So the technical problem reduces to two ques- 
tions: How far may the plot events be elaborated be- 
yond the degree at which they make clear the plot action? 
And to what extent may one introduce and develop 
incidents which do not belong to the plot action? The 
answer is simple enough in form, but hard to apply. 

Only such events may be introduced as heighten the 
single effect; and they may be developed only up to the 
point at which they begin to obscure the plot action either 
by interrupting it or else by diverting interest from it to 
themselves. 

Let us suppose that you have a plot whose most inter- 
esting feature is not the complication nor the atmosphere 
but, say, the hero's lack of humor. This defect you wish 



130 SHORT STORY WRITING 

to bring out most vividly, making it yield the story's 
single effect. In looking over the essential incidents of 
the bald plot, you find that, while they reveal the trait, 
they do not make the most of it. They give the fact 
but not the thrill of it. What then shall you do? Well, 
first of all, see whether some of the essential plot incidents 
cannot be elaborated so as to produce the thrill. If they 
can, you are fortunate. If they cannot, invent a few 
episodes which perfectly characterize your hero's mirth- 
lessness and add them to the narrative at the point where 
they are clear, relevant, and harmless to the continuity 
of the action. 

Where is this point? Occasionally you will find it at 
a lull in the main action where the latter shifts its trend. 
But, nine times out of ten, it is at the story's opening. Not 
by chance nor by any dead technical formality does it 
happen thus, but rather because an event so placed does 
not break in upon the plot action at all and, furthermore, 
because it fixes the character in advance, thereby relieving 
the reader of the task of discovering him. As the majority 
of stories require some measure of secondary intensifying 
episodes, the opening assumes a tremendous technical 
importance, of which we shall soon hear more. And those 
editors who read only the first page or two of a story 
manuscript seldom err in rejecting a contribution that 
does not impress them favorably in that brief space. 

The length of intensifying plot events that are placed 
at the opening is pretty easily controlled, but that of 
interpolated material is not. The reason for this is 
that every episode which enters into the texture of a plot 
must, for the drama's sake, hang together smoothly with 
its antecedents and its consequents, and a certain un- 
predictable amount of detail is involved in making the 
two transitions. Unfortunately, the ease and brevity of 
these depend so much upon the particular events that 



THE PLOT ACTION 131 

no useful rule, nor even suggestion, can be given about 
them. The writer must fall back upon the general prin- 
ciple. 

c. The two typical errors in plot action. An episode may- 
violate either the first or the second clause of the general 
principle and thus give rise to two kinds of faulty action, 
which we may name: 

i. Irrelevancy and 

ii. Over-intensification. 

i. Irrelevancy. Many writers admit matter to their 
pages 'because it is really connected with the story' 
or 'because, being connected with it in fact, it will 
lend a desirable air of reality to the tale'. These, alas, 
are fundamentally wrong reasons, and they have ruined 
whole libraries of would-be literature. The genuineness 
of such a connection is not the slightest argument in 
favor of introducing the matter. It would be, if you 
were a scientist investigating a real person and his affairs. 
But, as an artist striving to exhibit some single effect of 
a dramatic incident, you must suppress everything that 
does not make for this end. If you do not, you will 
produce things like a recent story entitled The Crime in 
Jedidiah Peebles House, 1 which is (unintentionally) 
a most solemn warning against the sin of realistic ir- 
relevancy. 

Its theme seems to be something like this: 'A criminal 
is relentlessly pursued by public vengeance and cannot 
hope to escape it'. The single effect proper to this is, 
of course, the stern joy of a more than personal justice, 
mingled perhaps with awe before the spectacle of Fate 
and the Furies working invisibly through the common 
people. The main plot action is admirably simple: 
a fleeing murderer, resting behind a hedge far from the 
scene of his crime, overhears some people talking about 

1 Harper's, March, 1912. 



132 SHORT STORY WRITING 

him and his past and his pursuers and his inevitable 
capture; as they stroll off, the sunset pours its blood-red 
light over him, and the sky holds up before his terror- 
stricken eyes a great cloud shaped like the head of the 
venerable old man whom he has slain. There you have 
an incident which Hawthorne would have delighted in 
and exalted to a magnificent, sombre allegory. But, in 
the author's hands, it has been ruined by the chatter of the 
wayfarers. Their private affairs, so far as I perceive, 
have no inner connection with the theme nor with the 
action; nevertheless they have been spun out and out and 
still out until the reader is forced to believe that, in some 
subterranean way, they are of the plot. More than a 
thousand words are wasted in talk about the women's 
dresses, their opinions about husbands, the old gentleman's 
seed store, his pet rabbits, and the love affair of his impe- 
cunious grandson. And all the while, behind the hedge, 
sits the murderer drinking in this dilute, irrelevant conver- 
sation. Poor fellow! If he is bored half as much as the 
reader is, the punishment exceeds his crim<\ 

ii. Over-intensification. This fault, unlike the first, 
is one to which very good writers are susceptible. In- 
deed, it is the supreme literary virtue running wild. 
He who clearly perceives his theme, its best single effect, 
and the plot action is most likely to be carried away by 
them and to overdraw some significant feature. Mau- 
passant becomes, at times, a victim of literary speed 
mania and strikes a pace that no narrative drama can 
hold. Poe often lays on horrors too thickfy. Meredith 
is thrust out of the story-world by the avalanche of his 
subtle refinements. And so on, even unto the latest 
of the great, O. Henry, who cannot always control his 
passion for topsy-turvy surprises. 

A fairly clear case of over-intensification occurs in 
Richard Harding Davis' entertaining psychological story, 



THE PLOT ACTION 133 

A Question of Latitude. 1 Its theme is put into the mouth 
of the English Coaster, who, speaking of the Congo 
country, says: 'It doesn't matter a damn what a man 
brings here, what his training was, what he is. The 
thing is too strong for him. ... He loses shame, 
loses reason; becomes cruel, weak, degenerate'. This 
the plot action illustrates. An eminently moral and 
well bred Bostonian newspaper man goes to reform the 
jungle, and the jungle deforms him — but not so seriously 
that we cannot laugh cynically at his plight, and marvel 
at the author's mercilessly accurate delineation of human 
nature in the raw. Now, in order to show the brute 
force of the tropical wildernesses in full swing, Davis does 
exactly the right things; first, he makes Everett, the 
reformer, the incarnation of culture and the proprieties; 
and, secondly, by anecdote, debate, and pure description, 
he portrays the Congo country in all its vileness. Every 
word of all this is pertinent and interesting. The trouble 
is that it is too interesting and too long. It outshines 
the story of Everett's infatuation, which is the climax 
and by all odds the most entertaining part of the plot. 
The first five hundred words present us with as minute 
a portrait of the hero as is possible in brief fiction. (0. 
Henry would have given as accurate a one in seventy- 
five words.) Then follow about twelve hundred 
words of conversation on shipboard about the un- 
amiable habits of West Coast savages and the cor- 
ruption which the African sun works under the European's 
skull. The next eight hundred words report Everett's 
harrowing first experiences; and here the plot action 
gets under way, somewhere around Word No. 2,400, which 
is at least a thousand words too late. 

d. The formalist fallacy. The assertion has often been 
made that 'the short story is Maupassant'; which is a 

1 In the collection entitled Once Upon a Time (Scribner's, 1910). 



134 SHORT STORY WRITING 

eulogistic way of saying that the pure direct plot action 
alone is the perfect pattern. This view, however, can 
be maintained only by assuming that the one legitimate 
single effect is that of dramatic velocity. Such a pre- 
supposition runs counter to the taste of most artists and 
readers and is, for this reason alone, indefensible inas- 
much as literary ideals are essentially a matter of taste. 
Few of us are so narrow that we find enjoyment only in 
such swift catastrophes as The Piece of String, The 
Necklace and Little Soldier. Life is full of gentler griefs 
and lazier merriment and more languorous romance which 
claim our tears and laughter no less strongly and which 
cannot be told adequately with Maupassant's lightning 
artistry. The pure dramatic story of the French type gives 
us the dizzying effect of terrific speed. Its scenes and 
catastrophes flit past as the landscape past a racing auto- 
mobile. Probably no other sensation is quite so intense, 
unless it is that of tumbling from an aeroplane. But 
there are many other kinds of intensity, and every well- 
balanced reader likes to change the flavor of his fiction 
occasionally. These other intensities are not all attained 
by swift, direct action. The quality accentuated in the 
story's single effect may be any one of a large number 
which reveal themselves in slower stirrings. They are 
especially prominent in three classes of stories: 

i. The thematic story commonly requires indirect 
action; because the development of the theme tends to 
follow the argumentative order of its proof, and the steps 
of the latter are seldom connected dramatically. 

ii. The psychological character story of the analytical 
type often calls for indirect action, especially when the 
forces at work in the character are either highly com- 
plicated or are interesting because of their surprising 
solution. In the former case the pattern of action re- 
sembles that of the story with sub-plots, the minor 



THE PLOT ACTION 135 

movements being those of the various interplaying in- 
stincts, prejudices, and appetites. 

iii. The complication story employs indirect action in 
proportion to its intricacy and to the importance of the 
solution. The pure surprise, such as the detective and 
the mystery tale, usually is indirect. 

In all other cases, however, direct action is better, par- 
ticularly in the ordinary character story. Such a story 
depicts conduct in a crisis, and this is never clearer and 
stronger than when told in its own simple terms, un- 
decorated by attendant circumstances and not refracted 
through some other character's experience. To inter- 
polate events or 'commentaries between the items of the 
pure plot may indeed interpret the latter gloriously, but 
it blurs the picture more or less, coloring the action with 
preachment. 

2. Necessity. One of the most hotly debated ques- 
tions in the older theories of the drama had to do with 
the nature and bounds of dramatic necessity. To what 
extent may the playwright allow accidents to happen on 
his stage? The weight of authority has always been 
against his allowing it at all. And this opinion has come 
over, quite naturally, into the theory of dramatic fiction, 
and today prevails there. As Brander Matthews neatly 
puts it, "fiction dealt first with the Impossible, then 
with the Improbable, next with the Probable, and now 
at last with the Inevitable". And in The Story-Teller's 
Art Charity Dye lays down the orthodox rule, which we 
must quote for the second time: "In a well-appointed 
story, not only must everything that happens seem to 
grow naturally out of the situation, but it must seem to 
be the only thing that could happen under the circum- 
stances." . » m * 

However sound this may be in the field of drama, it 
is little short of preposterous as a commandment to the 



136 SHORT STORY WRITING 

fiction writer. It could have been advanced only by 
persons whose interest in a certain type of literature 
hid everything else from their understanding. As a 
criterion of artistic merit it fails miserably, and as a guide 
in writing it is a sheer impossibility. Not one in a hundred 
good short stories produces so much as the fleeting im- 
pression of inevitability; and I do not believe that more 
than one author in a hundred strives for that effect. 
Those who do so, moreover, fall far short of it. Howells, 
for instance, aspires toward a psychological fatalism 
in which, as we have heard him say, the events of a story 
are the mere effects of the particular character whom the 
writer is exhibiting. As effects, they must of course 
appear as the necessary consequences of their causes. 
But how often do they in Howells' stories? Or, again, 
how often in James' and Mrs. Wharton's? I must confess 
that I have not experienced so much as the illusion of 
inevitability there, except in The Liar and in that marvel- 
ous novelette, Ethan Frome. 

This is not proof that the ideal of dramatic necessity 
is wrong. It is only an argumentum ad hominem. But 
practically it is as good as a demonstration; for where 
such masters of analysis as Howells, James, and Wharton 
fail we wrongly urge others to rush in. Impersonal evi- 
dence of the same import is not lacking, though; and it 
is most accessible in the ideals of short story. 

So long as we are trying to fix upon nothing more than 
the marks of a good short story, we have no right to look 
beyond the virtues of dramatic narrative with a single 
effect. We ought not select a theme or a type of material, 
or a literary style within such narrative and find therein 
the 'essence' of the genre. The 'essence' is not there, 
any more than all human beauty is resident in the smile 
of a lovely face that strikes our fancy. To think that 
it is, is to perpetrate what the logicians term the fallacy 



THE PLOT ACTION 137 

of accident. It is to confuse form and matter and to 
exalt the latter to the level of the first. Or it is to mistake 
an intensity for the quality which is intense. 

It may well be that drama attains its supremely en- 
thralling moment when it reveals a human soul triumph- 
antly asserting itself over circumstances which threaten 
to stifle its virtues and pervert its noblest instincts. 
But, even so, it does not follow that whatever falls short 
of this high pitch is not genuine drama. One might as 
well argue that only the most vivid blue is true blue, 
and only the loudest note true music. The combination 
of persons and events which makes dramatic action in- 
tense does not make it dramatic. To attain the intensity, 
the matter must first have acquired the specific quality. 

Let us now apply these dry, abstract propositions to 
the integrative intensifying of the short story. Dramatic 
necessity is only one of many devices for perfecting the 
single effect. It is not an ideal of the short story, as 
such; its usefulness is limited to a relatively small class of 
character plots, namely those which depict nothing but 
the operations of sharply defined mental types. Its 
employment elsewhere probably does more harm than 
good. 



138 SHORT STORY WRITING 



EXEKCISES 



The anecdote below is highly ambiguous. Give it as 
many reasonable interpretations as you can. Then 
amplify it so variously as to develop in turn (1) a broadly 
comic complication; (2) a pathetic character story; and 
(3) a moral tragedy. 

Charged with intoxication, a man dressed in a Santa 
Claus costume caused a stir today in the Adams Street 
Police Court. 

"What is this?" said the Magistrate, as he gazed on 
the figure before him. " Santa Claus in a police court? 
I thought he was too busy with getting things ready for 
Christmas to spend his valuable time in this place?" 

Santa Claus appeared bewildered and muttered 
something that sounded like too much Christmas, but 
was unable to say any more. 

Policeman Joseph Kane told the Magistrate that he 
had found the man, Louis Kane, at Fulton and Willoughby 
streets flourishing a bell and requesting the charity of 
passersby for Christmas. He had a cauldron, into which 
contributions were dropped. 

The policeman said he approached Kane and cautioned 
him not to be so enthusiastic about the boiling pot. 

"But," said Santa, "I am a member of the Volunteers 
of America and must earn my salary." 

"You're drunk," said the policeman. 

"Well, I did go into a saloon," the policeman quoted 
him as saying, "to get some string to tie my whiskers on, 
as they were falling off, and I must admit I did take about 
1 two fingers.'" 

The man and the pot were taken to the Adams street 
police station, where "Santa" spent the night, and was 
discharged today by the Magistrate with a reprimand. 

As Kane left the court he was heard to mutter, "Never 



EXERCISES 139 

2. a. Construct a humorous complication plot out of 
the following, using the judge as the butt. 

b. Make a thematic tragedy plot of it, building around 
'red tape' or else the cruel and empty dignity of the 
law. 

C. J. McGuire, a letter carrier, entered the Yorkville 
Court yesterday with a special delivery letter. He re- 
fused to remove his hat from his head when ordered to do 
so by Court Attendant Rasmussin. He said: 

"I am only obeying orders. I am not allowed to take 
off any part of my uniform while on duty." 

Magistrate Breen wanted to know whether the post- 
man couldn't strain a point in favor of courtesy, but 
McGuire, who seemed to be a stickler for departmental 
rules, said this was impossible. 

"I am only obeying orders. I am not allowed to take 
off any part of my uniform while on duty", he said, me- 
chanically. 

Having found out that the man to whom he had to 
deliver the letter was stationed in the Men's Night Court, 
McGuire started to walk out. 

"Be sure you keep your hat on when you go into the 
Night Court", Magistrate Breen called out. Whereupon 
McGuire answered in a monotone: 

" I am only obeying orders. I am not allowed to take 
off any part of my uniform while on duty." 

3. In each of the following stories discover (a) the items 
of the direct action; (b) those of indirect action (if any); 
(c) irrelevant episodes, and (d) over-intensified episodes. 
Explain each case of (c) and (d). 

Balzac, H. — La Grande Breteche. 

Voe—The Gold Bug. 

Kipling — The Man Who Would Be King 

Coppee — A Voluntary Death. 

0. Henry — Lost on Dress Parade (in The Four Million). 

London, J. — A Day's Lodging (in Love of Life). 

Benefield, B.— Old Johnnie (Scribner's, Dec, 1911) 



140 SHORT STORY WRITING 

Byron, T. P. — Loaded Dice (Everybody's, Jan., 1912). 

Osbourne, Lloyd — Detty the Detrimental (Everybody's, 
Aug., 1910). 

4. While reading each of the following stories, note (a) 
the point in the narrative where you think you foresee 
the outcome; (b) the point where you revise this guess, 
and (c) the accuracy of the guess. 

James, H. — Owen Wingrave. 

Deland, Margaret — The Child's Mother (in Old Chester 
Tales). 

Kipling, R. — His Wedded Wife (in Plain Tales from 
the Hills). 

London, J. — The Unexpected (in Love of Life). 

Henry, O. — A Blackjack Bargainer (in Whirligigs). 

By what handling of the action is suspense maintained 
in each story? Which handling succeeds best? 









THE ORDER OF EVENTS 141 



SUB-CHAPTER C. — THE ORDER OP EVENTS. 

This problem is a stumbling block. Not one beginner in 
twenty solves it, nor does more than one magazine story in 
five. Why is this? Chiefly because, in arranging events, 
the writer must look away from his plot for a while and put 
himself in the reader's place. He may construct his story, 
insofar as the choice and qualification of its material are 
concerned, with an eye to nothing save the material itself. 
For this labor he is sufficiently equipped if he understands 
his people, times, and places, and recognizes a dramatic 
complication when he sees or imagines one. But the 
instant he begins the narrative, he is confronted with a 
radically different task; he must now communicate with 
his public, and in such fashion that the latter gets not 
only the facts but their dramatic effect. This effect is 
produced by a delicate and exceedingly difficult mingling 
of revelations and concealments; for, as with humor and 
music, its peculiar quality depends upon what the audi- 
ence receives from moment to moment. In the language 
of rhetoric, it is a matter of order and suspense. 

Now, the art of suspense is as different from pure 
plotting as speech is different from thought. This must 
be emphasized today as never before, inasmuch as the 
contrary has been stoutly alleged by not a few authorities. 
Certain philosophers and literary folk tell us that a 
story is bound to be no better and no worse than the idea 
which the author has to express; and hence that, once 
you clear up your plot and know just what effect you wish 
it to produce, it will narrate itself. 1 This theory shoots 

x This theory of the self-expression of ideas originates with the 
brilliant Italian philosopher and critic, Benedetto Croce. He gives 
it a form, though, which is not open to the above criticism. The 
erroneous twist in it appears in the thinking of those, his followers, 
who apply the doctrine to literature and its teaching. 



142 SHORT STORY WRITING 

very close to the truth, and it is not easily refuted in 
debate; but a little editorial experience quickly discloses 
its one small, yet fatal exaggeration. Everybody who 
has read MSS. knows that the so-called ' story-sense 7 
and the knack of story-telling are two distinct gifts, 
almost as independent as the eyes are independent of the 
ears. Some writers conjure up delightful plots but 
cannot narrate them effectively, although they have all 
the details well in hand and write a flowing narrative 
style. Others, on the contrary, devise weak plots and 
seem to have little feeling for character and complication; 
but give them a plot, and they dash off a capital story. 
There is a well known story writer of to-day whose greatest 
successes have been built upon plots given to him by oblig- 
ing editors and whose desperate efforts at originality usu- 
ally gain him admittance only to third-rate maga- 
zines. And three of the most ingenious plot-makers 
and smoothest writers among my own students 
have always had difficulty in 'getting it over the 
footlights', while others much less gifted in fantasy 
and in command of words have readily produced 
salable stories. 

1. What order accomplishes. At least four things are 
accomplished by the arrangement of episodes: 

Transitions are smoothed. 
Characters and situations are clarified, 
iii. The natural climactic sequence of the plot events 
is made evident and sometimes intensified. 

iv. The single effect of the story is sharpened ('the 
theme is rounded off')- 

2. First general law of order. Throughout his work, the 
student should keep in mind the principle of simplicity, 
which, with reference to our present topic, may be thus 
stated : 

Alter the historical order no more than is necessary. 



THE ORDER OF EVENTS 143 

And the corollary is: First, discover the historical 
order and test its narrative values. The beginner, indeed, 
will generally do well to adhere to it in the first complete 
draft of each story. He should not trust his judgment 
in imagining the effect of the sequence. 

3. The special 'problems of order. With respect to the 
material of the story, there arise three special problems 
of order: 

a. The opening event. 

b. The closing event. 

c. The distribution of events throughout the plot 
action. 

In solving each of these problems, all four of the above 
named improvements are accomplished, in varying 
degrees. 

a. The opening event. The opening event has two 
functions; it must awaken the reader's interest in the 
story and it must also carry him quickly into the latter. 
Either function alone is easily discharged, but to handle 
both at once demands considerable skill and frequently 
much experimenting. Many a story which finishes 
strong begins with dull episodes. Witness that de- 
licious satire of Mrs. Wharton's, Xingu, 1 which starts 
off thus: 

Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture 
in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet alone. To 
this end she had founded the Lunch Club, an association 
composed of herself and several other indomitable hunt- 
resses of erudition. The Lunch Club, after three or four 
winters of lunching and debate, had acquired such local 
distinction that the entertainment of distinguished 
strangers became one of its accepted functions; in recog- 
nition of which it duly extended to the celebrated ' Osric 
Dane', on the day of her arrival in Hillbridge, an invitation 
to be present at the next meeting. 

1 Scribner , 8, Dec, 1911. 



144 SHORT STORY WRITING 

A Lunch Club hardly piques the jaded reader's curi- 
osity. But for the stinging characterization of Mrs. 
Baliinger, he might yawn and pass on to the next article. 
That clever hit, though, at the get-wise-quick lady stirs 
him; and he will be dull indeed if he does not wonder 
what is going to happen to her. Mrs. Wharton's device 
is perfect, as usual, and we may profitably scrutinize it. 

In these hundred words Mrs. Wharton has (1) pre- 
cisely anticipated the single effect of her story (mildly 
satirical merriment); (2) outlined the setting; (3) desig- 
nated and slightly described two of the leading characters, 
and (4) reported one of the events of the complication. 
The only thing that has not been broached is the outcome 
of the comedy; and to omit this is no fault. For the 
opening does not have to tell the story, but should only 
coax the reader into it pleasantly; and this can be ac- 
complished in most cases by the factors above named. 
Furthermore, there is always the danger that, in fore- 
casting the finish, you may betray the action and rob it 
of all tension and surprise, as Kipling all but does in 
At the Pit's Mouth, when he begins thus: 

Once upon a time, there was a Man and his Wife, and a 
Tertium Quid. 

All three were unwise, but the Wife was the unwisest. 
The man should have looked after his Wife, who should 
have avoided the Tertium Quid, who, again, should have 
married a wife of his own, after clean and open flirtation, 
to which nobody can possibly object, round Jakko or 
Observatory Hill. 

The eternal ' triangle' and its eternal tragedy are too 
palpable; and, though the outcome is not quite stated, 
you have only three guesses about it, and each is too, 
too easy. 

Now, bearing in mind the two functions of the opening 
and the ideals of our genre we may distinguish ten ways 



THE ORDER OF EVENTS 



145 



Direct action: - 



Indirect action: 



of getting a start. I list them in the order of their 
general excellence. 1 (The fifth alone is, as we shall see, 
often better than its rank.) A story may open with: 

1. Which reveals in some measure the 
setting, the characters, and the 
theme or the single effect. 

2. Which reveals character only. 

3. Which reveals the setting only. 

4. Which reveals only the theme or the 
single effect. 

5. A philosophical overture. (Anticipa- 
tory generalizations without ac- 
tion.) 

6. Which reveals setting, characters, 
and the theme or single effect. 

7. Which reveals character only. 

8. Which reveals the setting only. 

9. Which reveals only the theme or 
single effect. 

10. Pure description. (No action and 

no anticipatory generalizations.) 

For simplicity, I omit from this list six types, namely 
all those which reveal some two of the three story factors, 
such ac character and setting, or setting and theme. 
There are three two-phase openings with direct action, 

1 The student must be warned against supposing that he falls 
short of perfection whenever he is unable to begin a story in the 
better of these manners. It may be that his plot and his single 
effect necessitate indirect action or the concealment of character 
up to some point in the midst of the story. Not every story can 
have the best beginning, any more than it can have the strongest 
climax. Both start and finish depend more or less upon the epi- 
sodes that start and finish. Usually at least four or five openings 
are possible; and the author must discover and choose the best of 
these. 



146 SHORT STORY WRITING 

and three with indirect. Naturally each is better than 
any one-phase opening of its own type of action. And 
the student will readily grasp the nature and merits of 
each, as soon as he has mastered the ten fundamental 
types. 

Illustrations. 

1. The opening of Xingu, already quoted and analyzed 

2. Love of Life, by London: 



They limped painfully down the bank, and once the 
foremost of the two men staggered among the rough 
strewn rocks. They were tired and weak, and their faces 
had the drawn expression of patience which comes of 
hardship long endured. They were heavily burdened 
with blanket packs which were strapped to their shoulders. 
Head-straps, passing across the forehead, helped support 
these packs. Each man carried a rifle. They walked 
in a stooped posture, the shoulders well forward, the head 
still farther forward, and the eyes bent upon the ground. 

"I wish we had just about two of them cartridges 
that's layin' in that cache of ourn," said the second man. 

His voice was utterly and drearily expressionless. He 
spoke without enthusiasm; and the first man, limping 
into the milky stream that foamed over the rocks, vouch- 
safed no reply. 

Where are the men? What is their predicament? 
What is going to befall them? And what is the theme? 
You cannot know until much farther along in the tale. 
But the picture of the men excites your interest and 
promises to lead swiftly into the adventure. In the very 
next instant the accident happens which makes the 
story. 

3. The Pursuit of the Piano, by Ho wells: 

Hamilton Gaites sat breakfasting by the window of a 
restaurant looking out on Park Square, in Boston, at a 
table which he had chosen after rejecting one on the 
Boylston Street side of the place because it was too 






THE ORDER OF EVENTS 147 

noisy, and another in the little open space, among ever- 
greens in tubs, between the front and rear, because it 
was too chilly. The wind was east, but at his Park 
Street window it tempered the summer morning air with- 
out being a draught; and he poured out his coffee with a 
content in his circumstance and provision which he was 
apt to feel when he had taken all possible pains, even 
though the result was not perfect. . . . (The 
balance of the paragraph describes Gaites' food.) 

It is from this comfortable vantage that the hero first 
spies Phyllis' piano on its devious way to Lower Merritt. 
Hence his breakfasting there is an integral part of the 
plot action. But it carries the reader a very short 
distance into the story. Is Gaites a fugitive murderer 
or a hardware drummer or a Harvard professor of astrol- 
ogy? Is the story going to be about the restaurant or his 
cantaloupe or Park Square or himself? And will it deepen 
into tragedy or froth up into farce? Thus far, there's 
not a clue to any of these mysteries. The opening is 
conspicuously weaker than the preceding types. 

4. The Fall of the House of Usher, by Poe. 

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day 
in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung op- 
pressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, 
on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract cf country; 
and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew 
on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I 
do not know how it was — but with the first glimpse of the 
building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my 
spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved 
by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, senti- 
ment with which the mind usually receives even the 
sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I 
looked upon the scene before me — upon the mere house, 
and the simple landscape features of the domain — upon 
the bleak walls — upon the vacant, eye-like windows — 
upon a few rank sedges — and upon a few white trunks 



148 SHORT STORY WRITING 

of decayed trees — with an utter depression of soul which 
I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly 
than to the afterdream of the reveller upon opium — the 
bitter lapse into everyday life — the hideous dropping 
off of the veil. . 



This, it must be confessed, is not an absolutely pure 
specimen of a direct-action opening which reveals only 
the theme or the single effect. It tells us a very little, yet 
a little too much about the setting of the story. Never- 
theless, it will serve better than most of its type, inasmuch 
as it develops so marvelously the emotional tone of the 
story. With the very first phrase the gloom begins to 
spread over the pages, and not a sentence thereafter halts 
it. The power of it overwhelms all else and makes us 
forget the trifle we thus far know about the narrator and 
Usher. 

There are very few perfect openings of this fourth 
type, and the reason is evident: it is seldom that an 
event in the direct plot action can be told without re- 
vealing something about the people and places participant 
in it. For it is these who make the event. 

5. A Municipal Report, by 0. Henry. 

East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to 
Calif ornians. Calif ornians are a race of people; they are 
not merely inhabitants of a State. They are the South- 
erners of the West. Now, Chicagoans are no less loyal 
to their city; but when you ask them why, they stammer 
and speak of lake fish and the new Odd Fellows Building. 
But Calif ornians go into detail. 

Of course, they have in the climate an argument that 
is good for half an hour while you are thinking of your 
coal bills and heavy underwear. But as soon as they 
come to mistake your silence for conviction, madness 
comes upon them, and they picture the city of the Golden 
Gate as the Bagdad of the New World. So far, as a 
matter of opinion, no refutation is necessary. But, 



THE ORDER OF EVENTS 149 

dear cousins all (from Adam and Eve descended), it is a 
rash one who will lay his finger on the map and say: "In 
this town there can be no romance — what could happen 
here?" Yes, it is a bold and rash deed to challenge in 
one sentence history, romance, and Rand and McNally. 

I call this a philosophical overture because it is neither 
action nor description nor a simple essay-like introduc- 
tion, but rather a broad, generalized comment on the 
cosmic state of affairs which the story is to illustrate or 
prove. It is philosophical because generalized, and an 
overture because, to fill out the musical analogy, it gives 
us in advance the theme we are going to hear developed. 
It is, of course, an old device of essayists and not unknown 
to medieval minstrels. Poe used it perfectly several 
times, notably in The Man of the Crowd. But it is 
Kipling whom we have to thank for bringing it into 
vogue of late. His Plain Tales from the Hills contains 
a round dozen samples, the clearest of which occur in 
Thrown Away and On the Strength of a Likeness. And 
since them half a hundred authors have learned to turn 
the same trick neatly. 

Truth to tell, it is an easy trick; or, at least, much 
easier than plunging headlong into the story. For any 
cracker-barrel orator can draw a hundred glittering 
generalities out of any item on the first page of the news- 
paper, as deftly as a magician pulls rabbits from a hat; 
and every story that is worth telling at all is at least 
as prolific as newspaper items. Furthermore, the transi- 
tion from a universal proposition to the plot action follows 
three simple patterns, which we may name: (1) the ex- 
ception, (2) the proof, and (3) the musing that finds an 
answer. The first appears in Kipling's A Germ-Destroyer. 

As a general rule, it is inexpedient to meddle with 
questions of State in a land where men are paid to work 
them out for you. This tale is a justifiable exception. 



150 SHORT STORY WRITING 

Or you may follow this second model, from 
YoughaVs Sais by the same author: 

Some people say that there is no romance in India. 
Those people are wrong. Our lives hold quite as much 
romance as is good for us. Sometimes more. 

Or, thirdly, you may pursue subtler and lengthier 
musings; frivolous wisdom such as O. Henry passes out 
in The Venturers, Psyche and the P sky-scraper, and The 
Green Door; or serious reflections such as Howells traces 
in A Circle in the Water. Here the narrator seems to be 
wondering or half-asserting some thought when suddenly 
the thought exemplifies itself in an incident. 

The power of the philosophical overture cannot be 
denied. Being a statement of fact, or at least having 
the air of such, it draws the reader into a serious mood; 
and this mood tends to perpetuate itself throughout the 
reading of the whole narrative. Only a very well man- 
aged dramatic opening attains this highly desirable result. 
Few indeed are the stories which, from the outset, deceive 
us into feeling that they are history; and, of these, nearly 
all either sound the depths of life, as They and Without 
Benefit of Clergy and Will of the Mill do, or else are quasi- 
arguments with the stories proper seemingly tacked on 
by way of evidence. Now, this latter class is much 
larger than the former. And when we ask why, we 
come upon the one noteworthy exception* to the ranking 
of the ten possible openings. 

When the intrinsic dramatic quality of a character and 
the plot in which the character figures is mediocre, the 
philosophical overture is usually better than a direct-action 
opening. 

The reason for this is, in the narrowest sense of the 
word, technical. I mean, it is not to be found in the 
'pure idea' of the story, much less in the nature of the 

I 



THE ORDER OF EVENTS 151 

character depicted. The philosophical overture serves 
in two ways : first, to reinforce the single effect which, in pure 
dramatic presentation, may be weak; and, secondly, to 
attract the reader as the simple narrative cannot do. 1 
6. The Descent into the Maelstrom, by Poe. 

We had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. 
For some minutes the old man seemed too much ex- 
hausted to speak. 

"Not long ago," said he at length, "and I could have 
guided you on this route as well as the youngest of my 
sons; but, about three years past, there happened to me 
an event such as never happened before to mortal man — 
or, at least, such as no man survived to tell of — and the 
six hours of deadly terror which I then endured have 
broken me up, body and soul. You suppose me a very 
old man — but I am not. It took less than a single day to 
change those hairs from jet black to white, to weaken my 
limbs, and unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the 
least exertion, and am frightened at a shadow. Do you 
know, I can scarcely look over this little cliff without 
getting giddy?" 

The ' little cliff ' upon whose edge he had so carelessly 
thrown himself down to rest that the weightier portion 
of his body hung over it, while he was only kept from 
falling by the tenure of his elbow on its extreme and 
slippery edge — this * little cliff' arose, a sheer and unob- 
structed precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or 
sixteen hundred feet from the world of crags beneath us. 
Nothing would have tempted me to be within half a 
dozen yards of its brink. . . . (The rest of the 
opening describes the Maelstrom, as seen from this 
cliff.) 

1 These two services ought to be identical, but are not. Often 
the philosophical overture touches vividly upon some idea which 
bobs up in the story more or less incidentally. And, on the other 
hand, it sometimes reinforces the single effect without interesting 
the reader. In both cases the story plot is almost certain to be seri- 
ously defective. If its single effect cannot appeal to us in essay 
form, it is too confused or too artificial ever to appeal in any dra- 
matic form. 



152 SHORT STORY WRITING 

Here we have the setting, the dominant character, and 
the single effect consummately drawn in their first out- 
lines. But notice how the action differs from that of 
Xingu. There the events were the first of the plot which 
ensued; here they have only a remote, accidental connec- 
tion with the old fisherman's nerve-racking adventure. 
He leads the visitor to the cliff and, while the latter 
gazes upon the awful waters below, tells the story. 

For the character story and its varieties this opening 
rarely succeeds. Daudet sometimes bends it to his 
purposes in a swift and masterly fashion, as, for example, 
in The Siege of Berlin: 

We were going up Avenue des Champs-Elysees with 

Dr. V. , asking the shell-riddled walls and the side 

walks torn up by grape-shot for the story of the siege of 
Paris, when, just before we reached the Rondpoint de 
l'Etoile, the doctor stopped and, pointing to one of the 
great corner houses so proudly grouped about the Arc de 
Triomphe, said to me: 

" Do you see those four closed windows up there on that 
balcony? In the early days of August, that terrible 
August of last year, so heavily laden with storms and 
disasters, I was called there to see a case of apoplexy. It 
was the apartment of Colonel Jouve, a cuirassier of the 
First Empire, an old enthusiast on the subject of glory 
and patriotism, who had come to live on the Champs- 
Elysees, in an apartment with a balcony, at the outbreak 
of the war. Guess why ! In order to witness the triumph- 
ant return of our troops! Poor old fellow! The news of 
Wissembourg reached him just as he was leaving the 
table. When he read the name of Napoleon at the foot 
of that bulletin of defeat, he fell like a log." 

There is wonderful skill in this seemingly simple open- 
ing. Within the space of two short paragraphs it melts, 
like a dissolving stereopticon view, from the indirect to the 
direct action. Nevertheless it is the exception that 
proves our rule; for, upon close analysis, you will find that 



THE ORDER OF EVENTS 153 

the indirect action in it, which ends with 'Guess why!' 
does not depict the character trait of Jouve that counts in 
the story. We are casually told before that he is a chau- 
vinist, but not that his chauvinism sets things agoing. The 
instant the narrating physician has pointed out the apart- 
ment and named its former occupant he takes up the main 
plot action, and so deftly that the reader perceives no 
change in the narrative quality. But the change is 
there; so Daudet has not used the sixth opening type 
straight, he has bent it. 

This opening is very useful in the atmosphere story, 
and in the adventure story. The Descent into the Maelstrom 
is both of these. The interested student may easily figure 
out for himself its utility there. 

7. A Second-Rate Woman, by Kipling. 

"Dressed! Don't tell me that woman ever dressed in 
her life. She stood in the middle of the room while her 
ayah— no, her husband — it must have been a man — 
threw her clothes at her. She then did her hair with her 
fingers, and rubbed her bonnet in the flue under the 
bed. I know she did, as well as if I had assisted at the 
orgie. Who is she?" said Mrs. Hauksbee. 

"Don't!" said Mrs. Mallowe feebly. "You make my 
head ache. I'm miserable today." (Then follows more 
about the Dowd, who is the heroine.) 

This opening is weak, but not in every respect. It 
often does succeed in illuminating character, as in the 
above specimen. But it is long-winded, devious, and 
hence confusing. If you must depict a person indirectly, 
you have only two simple and plastic devices: let some- 
body state his impressions of the person, or else depict 
the effect the person has upon people or affairs. The 
former device is hard to keep within bounds; as in our 
illustration, when you let two women talk about a third, 
not even a Kipling can throttle them in time to save the 



154 SHORT STORY WRITING 

story. 1 The second device, on the other hand, tends to 
become an independent episode, readable perhaps for its 
own sake but leading nowhere. Of course, if you want to 
mislead your reader, you cannot do better than to use it. 
Hence in the pure surprise story and in humorous narra- 
tive (which calls for incongruity and breaks) it may be 
recommended. 
8. A Voluntary Death, by Coppee. 

I knew the poet Louis Miraz very well, in the old 
times in the Latin Quarter, where we used to take our 
meals together at a cremerie on the Rue de Seine, kept 
by an old Polish woman whom we nicknamed Princess 
Chocolawska, on account of the enormous bowl of creme 
and chocolate which she exposed daily in the show 
window of her shop. It was possible to dine there for 
ten sous, with 'two breads', an 'ordinaire' for thirty 
centimes, and a 'small coffee'. 

Some who were very nice spent a sou more for a napkin. 

(Then follows a description of the other habitues of 
the cremerie.) 

This is a wasteful opening and much less effective than 
the preceding one. In the character story the setting is 
almost invariably the least consequential factor. Why 
then should it have one of the most important paragraphs 
reserved for it exclusively? This question becomes doubly 
pertinent when, as in the present case, neither the action 
nor the setting which it reveals is closely connected with 
the chief events. Coppee advances his story in only a 
trifling degree; he establishes the acquaintance of the 
narrator with the poet hero, and nothing more. The 
Polish woman, the chocolate, the hoary ex-dictator, the 
Buddhist student, and all the rest of the scene count for 

1 Probably Kipling, in the story cited, wanted to show up the 
malicious garrulity of the Dowd's detractors. If so, the opening 
is more justifiable, although still overdone. 



THE ORDER OF EVENTS 155 

absolutely nothing in the career of Louis Miraz. Had 
all the good words wasted on them been spent on the 
splendid bravery of Miraz, the tale would have become a 
short story. 

9. A Passion in the Desert, by Balzac. 

"The sight was fearful!" she cried, as we left the men- 
agerie of Monsieur Martin. 

She had been watching that daring performer work 
with his hyenas, to speak in the style of the posters. 

"How on earth," she continued, "can he have tamed 
his animals so as to be sure of enough of their affection 
to—" 

"That fact, which seems to you a problem," I replied, 
interrupting her, "is however perfectly natural." 

"Oh!" she exclaimed, while an incredulous smile 
flickered on her lip. 

"Do you mean to say that you think beasts are en- 
tirely devoid of passions?" I asked her. "Let me tell 
3^ou that we can safely give them credit for all the vices 
due to our state of civilization." 

This type is clumsy and thoroughly antiquated. To 
find a skilful author dallying with it, you must go back 
to Balzac and Turgenieff; back to the days when nobody 
counted words, and men had not yet thought of the short 
story as an art having its own definite laws. The Russian 
novelist, in particular, exhibits the most amazing indif- 
ference to structure; many of his tales, such as Andrei 
Kolosoff and The Jew, exceed the crudity of a modern 
tyro in their openings. The wretchedest hack-writers 
know better today than to squander words in letting 
some imaginary person tell your reader that you are 
going to tell a story about a certain subject. It is this 
and no more that Balzac's opening accomplishes. 

Weak as it is, though, it often combines successfully 
with the philosophical overture. That is to say, if the 
indirect action takes the form of a discussion which not 



156 SHORT STORY WRITING 

only reveals the theme or single effect but also generalizes 
broadly and argumentatively about it, the opening may be 
very lively. Again we turn to Daudet for an exceedingly 
perfect and ingeniously unobtrusive specimen: the be- 
ginning of his pretty fable-story, The Goat of M. Seguin. 

To M. Pierre Gringoire, Lyrical Poet, at Paris. 

You will always be the same, my poor Gringoire! 

Think of it! You are offered the place of reporter on 
a respectable Paris newspaper, and you have the as- 
surance to refuse! Why look at yourself, unhappy 
youth! Look at that worn-out doublet, those dilapidated 
breeches, that gaunt face which cries aloud that it is 
hungry! And this is where your passion for rhyme has 
brought you ! This is the result of your ten years of loyal 
service among the pages of my lord Apollo! Aren't you 
ashamed? 

Be a reporter, you idiot! Be a reporter! You will earn 
honest crowns, you will have your special seat at Brebant's ; 
and you will be able to appear every first night with a 
new feather in your cap. 

No? You will not? You propose to remain perfectly 
free to the end? Well, just listen to the story of Monsieur 
Seguin's goat. You will see what one gains by attempting 
to remain free. 

Notice carefully in what respect this differs from the 
opening of A Passion in the Desert. In both the action 
is indirect. In both all that is revealed of the story is the 
theme. But in Balzac's opening the theme is merely 
stated in the midst of an extraneous incident, while in 
Daudet's it is ' played up', argued, and enlivened prettily, 
with irrelevant but illustrative action. Between the two 
manners, the static and the dynamic, lies the whole gulf 
that separates bungling from art. 

This combination opening is best suited to stories having 
well-marked themes or strong single effects. But it 
should be used only when the entanglements of the 



THE ORDER OF EVENTS 157 

plot happen to make a direct action opening awkward 
or dull. 

10. A Taste of Honey, by Mary Wilkins Freeman. 

The long, low, red-painted cottage was raised above 
the level of the street, on an embankment separated 
into two terraces. Steep stone steps led up the terraces. 
They were covered with green, slimy moss, and little 
ferns and weeds sprang out of every crack. A wall of 
flat slate stones led from them to the front door, which 
was painted green, sagged on its hinges, and had a brass 
knocker. 

The whole yard and the double banks were covered with 
a tall, waving crop of red-top and herds-grass and red and 
white clover. It was in the height of haying time. 

A grassy wheel-track led round the side of the house to 
a barn dashed with streaks of red paint. 

Off to the left stretched some waving pasture land, 
and a garden patch marked by bean-poles and glancing 
corn blades, with a long row of bee-hives showing in the 
midst of it. 

A rusty open buggy and a lop-eared white horse stood 
in the drive opposite the side door of the house. 

It seems incredible that a writer who could imagine 
the genuine pathos and tragedy of this story could stumble 
into it so clumsily. The opening might pass in the 
loosest impressionistic sketch, which is not supposed to 
get anywhere — and seldom does. But, in a short story, 
which A Taste of Honey ought to be, all these irrelevant 
minutiae of the landscape are so many mosquitoes buzzing 
around the plot. They do not spoil the plot, but they 
bother the reader who wishes to reach it. I trust that 
no argument is needed to condemn them. The student 
who does not sense their impropriety will, I fear, never 
grasp the short story. Incidentally be it said that the 
ability to unreel such description is no mark of literary 
power. He is a dull high school graduate who cannot 
equal it. 



158 SHORT STORY WRITING 



Exercises 



Analyze the openings of the following stories and tell 
which type each is. Also criticize the fitness of each. 

Hopper, J. — Memories in Men's Souls (American, 
Feb., 1911). 

Johnson, O. — One Hundred in the Dark (Saturday Ev. 
Post, Oct. 21, 1911). 

Moore, G. — The Exile (in The Untitled Field: Lippincott, 
1903). 

Coppee, F. — An Accident (in Ten Tales, Harper's. 1890). 

James, H. — Collaboration. 

Williams, J. L. — The Honeymoon (in The Married Life 
of the Frederic Carrolls, Scribner's, 1910). 

Freeman, Mary Wilkins — A Humble Romance. 



THE CLOSING EVENT 159 



b. The closing event. In comparison with the opening, 
the closing event is no problem at all. The variety of 
endings is much less, and one's choice is not supremely- 
important. Furthermore, the material is more plastic 
and may be experimented upon freely, without involving 
radical changes in the body of the story. 

There are three types of endings: 

i. The direct denouement. 

ii. The significant aftermath. 

iii. Interpretative comment. 

i. The direct denouement. This is the ideal finish of the 
pure dramatic story. If action and character develop- 
ment have advanced apace; if, in the supreme crisis, all 
that remains for us to learn is how the hero, being what we 
know him to be, meets it; then the author who tells us 
more only offends us. Few are the gems which are cut 
so true up to the last stroke; hence this finish is rare. It 
is more often approximated in the dramatic mystery 
story. We find it in Poe's masterpiece, Ligeia: 

. I stirred not — but gazed upon the appari- 
tion. There was a mad disorder in my thoughts — a 
tumult unappeasable. Could it indeed be the living 
Rowena who confronted me? Could it indeed be Rowena 
at all — the fair-haired, the blue-eyed Lady Rowena 
Trevanion of Tremaine? Why, why should I doubt it? 
— had she then grown taller since her 
malady? What inexpressible madness seized me with 
that thought? One bound, and I had reached her feet! 
Shrinking from my touch, she let fall from her head, 
unloosened, the ghastly cerements which had confined it 
and there streamed forth, into the rushing atmosphere of 
the chamber, huge masses of long and dishevelled hair; 
it was blacker than the raven's wings of the midnight! 
And now slowly opened the eyes of the figure which stood 
before me. "Here then, at least/' I shrieked aloud, 



160 SHORT STORY WRITING 

"can I never — can I never be mistaken — these are the 
full, and the black, and the wild eyes — of my lost love 
—oi the lady— of the LADY LIGEIA." 

It is inconceivable that a better denouement could be 
fashioned. The very last word alone lifts the veil. 
Until it has been read, the reader's imagination is led off 
in a different path. Unless he has analyzed as he goes, 
he is quite sure that the Lady Rowena is returning to 
life. And, fancying this, he may suspect that the story 
breaks in twain clumsily; the earlier account of Ligeia 
seeming irrelevant to the resurrection of her successor. 
But, when that one key word falls under his eye, the 
entire phantasmagorical welter of bewilderments and 
horror orders itself into a clear plot whose theme Poe has 
thrice sounded: 'Man doth not yield him to the 
angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the 
weakness of his feeble will'. 

Probably few plots admit of such manipulation. The 
dramatic form is too intense to suit most material. To 
be more accurate, most themes do not focus so sharply 
upon one instant's revelation. Their solutions are 
complex and require a certain elaboration. Xingu, 
for instance, reaches its denouement when the Lunch 
Club consults the encyclopaedia and learns that the 
topic of their learned conversation is not a religion nor a 
book but a river in South America. But, though the 
denouement is here reached, it is not finished in that act. 
The story demands that every member of the Lunch 
Club realize minutely how Mrs. Roby has hoaxed it, and 
that the Club 'do something about it\ Inevitably all 
this must follow, not precede, the discovery in the en- 
cyclopaedia. Again, there are other themes which, though 
they may be wrought into action with the Ligeia finish, 
ought not to end so, inasmuch as the dramatic quality of 
their complication is too weak to harmonize with this 



THE CLOSING EVENT 161 

most intense of all dramatic denouements. Low-grade 
magazines and Sunday Supplements reek with mechani- 
cally perfect specimens of it. Their detective stories and 
other tales of mystery keep the reader guessing up to 
the final paragraph. Nevertheless, they fall flat; and the 
reason is that their form exceeds their material. The 
shape and motion of a story is visible in each, but the 
stuff of life is not therein. 

This failure, alas, is all too easy. It is easy to tangle 
your heroes and villains, and to manufacture myste- 
ries. It is as easy as inventing a cipher code or conceal- 
ing a fact, and often it is nothing more. Now, the 
difficulty of solving a puzzle or discovering a way out 
of a predicament is usually out of all proportion to the 
importance of the puzzle or predicament. The brain 
power that has been spent on pigs-in-clover, charades, 
and jig-saw pictures might have abolished war; and the 
manual labor that has gone into them would have dug 
the Panama Canal. In real life, where it is stylish to be 
absurd, this disproportion of effort to result is allowed; 
but in art, which is little more than the passion for fitness 
expressing itself, it is the unpardonable sin. The mountain 
that brings forth a mouse is brother to the author who 
works up a tense, breathless perplexity and then clears 
it up with an episode which shows the complication 
to be trifling. In the world of beauty, whither he would 
lead us, he may affect us seriously only with serious 
affairs, and deeply only with deep, and romantically only 
with romantic. The humorist alone is privileged to toy 
with the incongruous. 

I cannot drop this topic without urging the student to 
study carefully the maturer stories of O. Henry, who 
surpasses all writers past and present in his mastery of 
the direct denouement. What a host of his complications 
do not solve themselves until the last fifty words! There 



162 SHORT STORY WRITING 

is The Furnished Room, with its startling, pathetic com- 
plication clearing in Mrs. Purdy's last remark: " She'd 
a-been called handsome, as you say, but for that mole 
she had a-growin' by her left eyebrow". There is Tobin's 
Palm, with its preposterously funny reunion of the lovers 
in the last ten seconds. And, finest of all, though by no 
means the last in the list, is The Municipal Report, with 
its yellow horn overcoat button the size of a fifty-cent 
piece clearing up a dark mystery and proving the romance 
of dull places. There is no exceeding the perfection of 
these denouements. One must admire them with a touch 
of awe, even though one dislikes the slap-dash, slangy, 
kinetoscopic hurry of the stories. Nowhere outside of 
Poe and Maupassant are they equalled. 

ii. The significant aftennath. This is the commonest 
ending and usually the most appropriate. It consists of 
some little event which shows precisely how the char- 
acters are taking the denouement. Sometimes it in- 
tensifies the latter, but more often only clears away the 
last uncertainty about it. The length depends entirely 
upon the particular denouement, and the importance 
of showing the characters' reaction to it. In Xingu 
the aftermath is quite elaborate, and necessarily so. 
It begins after Mrs. Ballinger says: "And they're shrieking 
over us at this moment", — and continues to the very end. 1 
In Coppee's The Substitute it is swift and short. The de^ 

1 The long conversation in which the ladies fit together Mrs. 
Roby's remarks and bring them into harmony with the encyclo- 
paedia's statements about Xingu is not aftermath, but denouement. 
Some readers who are over-fond of the Maupassant model feel 
that Mrs. Roby's previous connection with South America should 
have been brought out in the opening of the story, so that this 
long explanation might be dispensed with, at the very point where 
things should rush along at top speed. But analysis proves this 
opinion wrong. The single effect depends absolutely upon keeping 
the nature of Xingu hidden until the denouement. 






THE CLOSING EVENT 163 

nouement is over when Jean Frangois takes Savinien's 
crime upon himself and holds out his hands for the hand- 
cuffs, laughing at the police. After that: 

To day he is at Cayenne, condemned for life as an in- 
corrigible. 

Observe how much this little sentence accomplishes. 
It fixes the outcome, past all misunderstanding. Omit 
it, and the reader might wonder whether Jean Fran- 
cois was as great a hero as he led Savinien to think. 
The galleys are terrible places; but did the ex-convict 
end up there? Might he not have concealed his identity, 
been sentenced as a first offender, and let off with a six 
months' sentence? Or might he not have escaped again 
from the thongs of justice? Perhaps the reader might 
not frame these doubts consciously; he might only be 
less profoundly impressed by the shortened version. But 
this weaker effect would be due to the indecisiveness of 
the denouement. 

iii. Interpretative Comment. This is the counterpart 
of the philosophical overture. Like it, it contains no 
action; unlike it, it need not consist of generalizations. 
It may be no more than a summary and a sentiment, as 
in London's The Heathen: 

And so passed Otoo, who saved me and made me a 
man, and who saved me in the end. We met in the 
maw of a hurricane and parted in the maw of a shark, 
with seventeen intervening years of comradeship the 
like of which I dare to assert have never befallen two 
men, the one brown and the other white. If Jehovah 
be from his high place watching every sparrow fall, not 
least in His Kingdom shall be Otoo, the one heathen of 
Bora Bora. And if there be no place for him in that 
Kingdom, then will I have none of it. 

Or it may return to the opening event, as in Harris 
Merton Lyon's horribly true sketch of American village 



164 SHORT STORY WRITING 

life, entitled $448.00. Somewhat abridged, the opening 
runs thus: 

In fourteen decillion B.C., . . . this stubborn 
planet upon which we so carelessly shuffle our feet began 
a series of Experiments toward an End. ... At 
first she tried for trees, and got trees. Then snails, 
clams, jellyfish. Then, brooding over her intent, she 
made the jellyfish climb up out of the sea. . . . Then 
she watched yearningly through the morose years the 
light and the air beat down upon the jellyfish and irritated 
it. . . After three hundred million jellyfish had died 
in the process, she slumbered and considered the process 
complete. After fourteen decillion, one thousand eight 
hundred and seventy-six years had passed, she rested, 
for the End of her Experiments had come. 
The numberless millions of jellyfishes and the superb 
march of countless years had produced Leander Percy 
Johnson. 

Then follows the story of Leander's career; a story 
made twice horrible by the streak of humor in its telling. 
The dramatic end comes when the army surgeons pull 
Leander, U. S. V. and fever victim, out of his storm- 
wrecked Chickamauga tent, dead. Then follow two 
endings, the first an unnecessary aftermath, and the second 
the following brief interpretative comment: 

And the old earth groaned and began it all over again. 
For Leander had returned to the jellyfish whence he 
came. He had gone back to fourteen decillion B.C. 

A third excellent variation is a return to the philo- 
sophical overture. In this wise Ho wells admirably 
turns the close of A Circle in the Water. The story 
opens, you recall, with the narrator's musing over the 
consequences of good and evil and over the ever- 
widening circles made by pebbles cast into the pool. 
And, after Tedham has been restored to his daughter, 



THE CLOSING EVENT 165 

comes this ending, which integrates perfectly with the 
final action: 

. . . So far as human vision can perceive, the 
trouble he made, the evil he did, is really at an end. 
Love, which alone can arrest the consequences of wrong, 
had ended it, and in certain luminous moments it seemed 
to us that we had glimpsed, in our witness of this ex- 
perience, an infinite compassion encompassing our whole 
being like a sea, where every trouble of our sins and 
sorrows must cease at last like a circle in the water. 

Were we here cataloguing all types of endings which have 
been used by good writers, we should have to mention, 
among others, two forms of the significant aftermath 
and two of the interpretative comment. The first pair 
are (a) the effect of the plot action upon a character in 
the story, and (b) its effect upon the narrator or hearer 
outside of the story. The second pair are (a) a comment 
by a character, and (b) one by the narrator outside of 
the story. (When the narrator happens to be a character 
in the story, we have case (a) in both instances.) These 
distinctions need not concern us here; for they have to 
do with the point of view from which each particular 
story is told. The serious problems raised by the point 
of view will soon be discussed. It is enough to notice 
in the present connection that there is one ending which 
is to be shunned whenever possible, namely the second 
type of aftermath. This occurs in its most deadly form 
in TurgeniefFs Andrei Kolosoff: 

"And what became of Varya?" asked some one. 
"I don't know," replied the story-teller. 
We all rose and went our various ways. 

Could anything jerk the reader more violently out of 
the imaginary world in which Kolosoff lives? And to less 
purpose? The author might better have sold the space of 



166 SHORT STORY WRITING 

these three atrocious lines to a patent medicine quack 
for advertising purposes. 

When, however, such an ending is combined with 
interpretative comment, it becomes much more endur- 
able, as in Hopper's Memories in Men's Souls. At best, 
though, it is a makeshift, to be avoided whenever 
possible. 






DISTRIBUTION OF EVENTS 167 



c. The distribution of events throughout the plot action. 
To the casual scanner of magazines the dramatic patterns 
of stories seem infinitely numerous. To the hardened pro- 
fessional reader they reduce to a half-dozen, and some- 
times even this half-dozen tends to shrink. The popular 
impression derives from the natural and proper blending 
of the plot action with the 'trimmings' in the reader's 
mind. The author forecasts, deceives, comments, sup- 
presses, and bursts into description in a multitude of 
manners; and, the more skilful he, the more deceivingly 
all these touches fuse with the broad sweep of the plot. 
This is as it should be; for the machinery of the story 
should be concealed no less than are the wing lights and 
the thunder-drum of the theatre. But it produces the 
illusion of a boundless variety of narrative types. 

The fact is, very few first-class stories deviate widely 
from the old, familiar pattern of the drama. There are 
three movements (corresponding to the three acts of the 
modern play). In the first three factors appear: (a) 
the setting, (b) the characters, and (c) the generating 
circumstances; that is, those which give rise to the ensuing 
complication. The second movement presents two classes 
of episodes: (a) the complication, and (b) the reaction of 
the characters to it. This reaction often bulks large. 
The third movement gives (a) the crucial situation 
(climax), and (b) the denouement (with aftermath, if 
one is needed). It is this pattern which orders the 
episodes. And you should never depart from it unless 
something in the single effect which you seek or in the 
specific texture of your plot action compels you. This is 
a commandment not because the pattern is as old and 
venerable as Aristotle, but because it is so obviously 



168 SHORT STORY WRITING 

the strongest dramatic sequence that people long ago 
discovered it and agreed upon it. 

This pattern carries with it several implications: 

1. Telescope the events within each movement as much as 
possible. That is, make each episode develop all the story 
factors in its movement. 

2. If the events cannot be telescoped, depict first those 
which demand the greater amount of pure description, except 
insofar as the single effect or dramatic sequence forbids 
this. 

3. Transitions are best effected by telescoping the last 
event of one movement with the first event of the next. 

4. The natural order of events may be altered in only two 
cases: (a) when the denouement can be concealed up to the 
proper instant in no other way, and (b) when the plot action 
is shaped by some character's learning the episodes in their 
false order. 

Another quartet of rules might be laid down, but the 
learner will automatically master them as soon as he has 
grasped those we have given. And now a word about 
these. 

1. We have repeatedly seen that the single effect at 
which the short story aims demands the employment 
of a minimum of material; and this fact alone is enough 
to warrant the first rule. In strict logic, this rule is not 
a rule of arrangement, but rather one for escaping the 
problem of arrangement. You will see this, once you 
consider an extreme illustration. Suppose you were able 
to depict adequately in one incident the setting, the 
generating circumstances, and the characters. Would 
you have to worry over the next event? Not at all. 
You would go straight to the complication and character 
trait of the second movement. And if you could also 
telescope these perfectly into one episode, again you would 
have transcended the problem. In anecdotes and ad- 



DISTRIBUTION OF EVENTS 169 

venture stories, which seldom involve much character 
drawing, it is not surpassingly difficult to do this, inas- 
much as a mere name and a phrase will there tell enough 
about the people. The opening event of Daudet's 
The Little Pies integrates almost perfectly the three 
factors, character, setting, and complication: 

That morning, which was a Sunday, Sureau, the pastry 
cook on Rue Turenne, called his apprentice and said to 
him: 

"Here are Monsieur Bonnicar 's little pies; go take them 
to him and come back at once. It seems that the Ver- 
saillais have entered Paris." 

In these three short sentences Daudet marshals almost 
everything which is going to count in the ensuing dramatic 
movement. There is only one slight omission. The pas- 
try cook should have warned the lad not to dally, because 
M. Bonnicar was a very particular and fidgety old epicure. 
This would have introduced accurately, albeit indirectly, 
the one other important personage. As the opening 
stands, you have no hint that Bonnicar himself is going to 
figure in the affair; much less that his gastronomical 
habits will. Nevertheless, it is a wonderfully skilful 
piece of integration. 

2. This is the most frequently violated rule of order. 
And the violation is due largely to false teaching. Two 
doctrines have been advanced by writers on narrative 
technique: one is that all inevitable description must be 
bunched as near the opening as possible; the other is 
that the story must begin with action and scatter its 
descriptions where they will least clog the movement 
of the plot. The first doctrine is based upon the as- 
sumption that the speed of the narrative should increase 
steadily to the end, and that hence the slowest material, 
which is, of course, the more descriptive, must come 
first. The second doctrine grows out of the hypothesis 



170 SHORT STORY WRITING 

that the short story should be pure dramatic narrative 
throughout, and therefore disencumbered of all exclu- 
sively descriptive passages. 

Unfortunately, both suppositions are false; uniform 
acceleration of action is not an ideal at all, and pure 
dramatic narrative is not an exclusive ideal. The short 
story has two ideals, both playing incessantly upon 
every manipulation of its material. The correct principle 
of arrangement reckons equally with both of these ideals, 
and it consequently bids us to employ descriptive events 
at those points where description best intensifies both the single 
effect and the action; or, if impossibly both, then that one 
which stands in greater need of intensification. 

Now, from this may be deduced several special prac- 
tices the most important of which are the following: 

a. The more completely the plot action and the single 
effect grow out of a single setting, a single character trait, 
and a single generating circumstance, the more completely 
should the descriptive events be massed in the opening. 

b. The more completely the plot action and the single 
effect grow out of some one factor (such as the setting, or the 
character trait, or the complication), the more completely 
should the descriptive events mass around the first develop- 
ment of that factor. 

These two rules hold not only for character stories but 
for all other types. To perceive this, consider three 
stories which differ as widely as possible from one another : 
A Coward, Ligeia, and O. Henry's skit, Calloway } s Code. 
The first is the purest character drama; the second is that 
rarest of all, the three-phase story; and the third is the 
lightest sort of complication. I choose these, because the 
test of a rule is in extreme instances. 

In the first everything grows out of the viscount's 
single trait, a single custom of French society, and a 
single encounter; hence every line of description is 



DISTRIBUTION OF EVENTS 171 

packed into the first three paragraphs. And why? 
Because, first of all, this description must precede all 
the action, in order to make the latter intelligible; and, 
secondly, because no other description is needed, inasmuch 
as the single effect is here identical with the dramatic 
action. 

In Ligeia Poe aims at integrating setting, character, 
and complication; and the single effect, which is the 
emotion aroused by the thought of a human will triumph- 
ing over death, even through another's body, is produced 
equally throughout all three factors. You feel it in 
the person of Ligeia, and in the death chamber, and in the 
grewsome complications. Every touch and turn keeps 
you thinking vaguely that stupendous, mysterious powers 
are at work in the invisible environment. Now, unlike A 
Coward, Ligeia has several generating circumstances and 
several complications, all of which the reader will easily 
find for himself. It is therefore an extreme negative in- 
stance under rule (b). Its plot and action and single effect 
do not grow out of one factor, nor are the factors out of 
which they grow simple; therefore, if our rule is sound, 
the descriptive events will not mass around one factor 
or one event, but will be distributed around many. This, 
of course, is precisely what we find. The story is the 
despair of the dramatic formalists who preach the Mau- 
passant pattern. More than 2,000 words at the very 
outset — nearly as many as in A Coward — describe 
minutely the beauty and learning and character of 
Ligeia. Between the first movement, which ends with the 
marriage of Rowena, and the second, which begins with 
her husband's first outbursts of hatred toward her, there 
are interpolated over six hundred words sketching the 
bridal chamber in the gloomy dwelling. Finally, through- 
out the third movement, the picturing is steady and rich, 
even up to the denouement. 



172 SHORT STORY WRITING 

Calloway 1 s Code tells us how a cub reporter deciphered 
a mysterious cable dispatch which the newspaper's 
special correspondent in the Russo-Japanese war smug- 
gled past the press censor. The whole interest centres 
upon the cipher and the youngster who discovered it. 
Hence it is that the only description in the entire story 
is of Vesey, the cub, at the moment when he walks in, 
peruses the message which has baffled everybody else, 
and solves it; and of the veteran who padded the report 
for scare-head purposes. Unquestionably, this second 
touch is irrelevant; but it is very brief and inoffensive. 

In conclusion, the gist of the second rule of order is this : 
usually some special quality of the single effect or the 
dramatic action fixes the order of the more important 
descriptive events and pure descriptions; and when it 
does not clearly do so, the latter properly come as early in 
the story as possible. 

3. The rule of transitions is so familiar and lucid that 
discussion is not called for. Perhaps it should be noticed 
in passing, though, that many plots pass abruptly from 
movement to movement, by the very nature of their 
events and their direction. The student must therefore 
be on his guard against a false ideal. He must not strive 
to make the action continuous, unless he has assured him- 
self that it is not intrinsically broken. Often the breaks 
will be so sharp that, in mere honesty to the public, 
they should be typographically symbolized. I know, 
some critics consider a line of asterisks in the middle of a 
tale most uncanonical; but so much the worse for critics 
and canons. They are trying the impossible, in imposing 
an external form upon an art which takes its shape only 
from ideals and ideas. Maupassant's The Necklace has 
four visible breaks, and yet even the formalists concede its 
flawlessness. A Coward has two breaks; The Horla, with 
its diary form, has half a hundred; The Elixir of Father 



DISTRIBUTION OF EVENTS 173 

Gaucher has six, — and, were a chronicler so minded, he 
might array a glittering host of splendid works against the 
error, drawing them from almost every master of fiction. 

4. The superiority of the natural order of events ought 
to be apparent, but to many it is not. Young writers 
commonly suppose that historical inversion is an unfailing 
virtue; that it whets the reader's curiosity, puzzles him, 
and thus heightens the effect of the story. The result 
of this belief is a flood of stories that aren't stories; that 
is, much writing about undramatic, intrinsically dull 
happenings. The momentary illusion of story stuff is 
produced by twisting things or by standing them on their 
heads. One might count so-called detective and mystery 
tales by the score which ape the real kind by just such 
operations. They attempt it because the real kind almost 
always inverts events; and the aping authors fancy that, 
by copying the form, they may seize the substance. 
This peculiarity of the cheap mystery and detective story 
we have already dwelt upon. 1 

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a plot that is very 
weak when narrated in its natural order is not worth 
pottering over. And, if strong in that order, its strength 
is seldom increased by inversion. The rare exception is 
usually of the second kind above mentioned; it is a 
story of misunderstanding. In such a story, the domi- 
nant character sometimes does what he does because he 
supposes that something happened at a certain time; when, 
as a matter of fact, it happened before or after that time 
and under circumstances which give it a meaning unsus- 
pected by the hero. In such a case, the story must be 
told partly from the hero's point of view, in order that we 
may sympathetically understand his behavior. 

>a 160 etc. 



174 SHORT STORY WRITING 



SUB-CHAPTER D. — THE POINT OF VIEW 

1. The confusion on this subject. This is the most 
neglected of all technical questions, and the most confused. 
The strangest medley of conflicting and vague opinions on 
the subject fills the text-books. At one extreme, we hear 
that 'the best method of narration, the simplest and most 
natural, is to tell the story in the third person, as if 
you were a passive observer.' 1 And at the other ex- 
treme: 'Any way is good, if it is artistic; but some ways 
are harder than others.' 2 Now, the former extreme is 
false in every adjective; the third person is neither the 
best nor the simplest nor the most natural point of view, 
as will shortly be proved. And, as for the second ex- 
treme, it is an empty phrase. It means nothing to say 
that any way is good, if artistic; for 'good' means 'artistic* 
here, so that the assertion comes to this: any artistic 
way is artistic, and any good way is good. Of course, 
what the critic is trying to say is that the point of view 
depends upon the writer's personal taste and skill. But 
this is demonstrably false, at least in most instances. 
Truth is, the point of view is inextricably bound up with 
the specific material and the desired single effect of each 
particular story, and hence only an analysis of these 
latter will throw light upon the angle from which the 
story is to be told. 

2. Two meanings of 'point of view. 1 Though the risk 
of confusion is slight, it is well to distinguish at once two 
senses in which one may speak of a point of view. People 
say that Thomas Hardy's point of view is artificial, Haw- 
thorne's ultra-puritanical, and Maupassant's cynically 

Barrett, 131. 
2 Esenwein, 109. 



THE POINT OF VIEW 175 

pessimistic. And they mean that what Hardy himself 
sees and depicts is unreal, what Hawthorne observes is a 
world mercilessly dominated by a cruel monster called 
Virtue; and what Maupassant notes is that man belongs 
to the animal kingdom. Now all this, of course, is not 
what we refer to when we say that A Coward is narrated 
from an objective point of view. It is the angle of narra- 
tion which we are here thinking of, and not the effect of 
the things which the author depicts. The difference, as 
well as the relation, between these points of view is pre- 
cisely that which we find in painting; and as the latter is 
much more visible and simple, it may well serve as a 
leading string into a sharper comprehension of the other. 
Corot loved the blues and grays of springtime dawns 
and rain-washed glades. Only where he found these 
colors in all their freshness was he wont to stand his 
easel. Now, in our fancy, let us follow him some soft 
morning until he comes upon a dip in the land framed 
with young poplars and cherishing the last wraiths of 
night mist. The sight halts him, and he drops his kit 
on the wet grass. In this act he expresses the first point 
of view. He is doing what Hardy, Hawthorne, and 
Maupassant do; he selects from the world those things 
toward which he is acutely sensitive. Seeing them as other 
men do not, he strips them of all those many entangling 
qualities which obscure them and reports them as they 
are 'in themselves.' But does he place his easel wherever 
he happens first to perceive the view? Hardly. He 
saunters around the dale, goes a way into it, then with- 
draws to a considerable distance, climbs a nearby hill 
and perhaps watches through all the morning hours. 
He is hunting for the one best perspective. He knows 
that the poplars and the tilt of the land, and the angle 
of light and the mist and everything else combine in an 
infinite variety of ways, according to the vantage of the 



176 SHORT STORY WRITING 

observer; and that some few of these combinations 
bring out the pure values of the much-sought blues and 
grays much more faithfully than all the others. In 
seeking one of them, the artist is doing the very same 
thing that Maupassant does when he tells the story of 
the Horla as the victim of the monster experiences it; and 
the same thing that Hawthorne does when he narrates 
The Birthmark as he himself senses the episodes. 

The difference between the two points of view is pro- 
found, and yet they are intimately related, as different 
things often are. 

The first point of view expresses the artist's sensitivity, 
wish or belief toward a subject. The second point of view 
expresses the arrangement of some particular material 
which makes conspicuous some quality of the latter which 
the artist wishes to report. This quality may or may not 
happen to be one of those chosen by the artist for expression. 
It may merely serve to express something else. 

For clarity, then, we must give names to each. The 
first I shall call the artist's attitude, and the second the 
angle of narration. Concerning the former something 
will be said in sections 5 and 6 below. We now turn to the 
angle of narration. 

3. The angle of narration. There are three typical 
angles of narration: 

a. The pure objective. 

b. The angle of the inactive witness or hearer. 

c. The angle of a participant. 

i. A subordinate character. 

ii. A dominant character, 
a. The objective. This might be called the photog 
rapher's point of view, did not the epithet suggest 
mechanical accuracy and inartistic realism. The truth 
of the metaphor, however, is illuminating. In the first 
place, like the working of a camera plate, objective 



; 



THE POINT OF VIEW 177 

narrative seems wholly impersonal; and, secondly, the 
narrator stands at a distance from the events he records, 
no less than the photographer does. These are the sure 
marks of the angle, and there is no other. 

Few stories have been told in this manner from start 
to finish, though a host are predominantly. Maupassant's 
The Piece of String and The Necklace nowhere reveal the 
events or characters as they might have appeared to some 
eye-witness or active participant in the action. The 
feelings, thoughts, and deeds of Maitre Hauchecorne and 
the Loisels are chronicled as a physician on a filing card 
might record the temperature, pulse and delirium of a 
fever patient. Indeed, the ending of The Piece of Siring 
might well be an excerpt from a hospital report: 

He gnawed his nails, and exhausted himself in vain 
efforts. 

He grew perceptibly thinner. 

Now the jokers asked him to tell the story of The 
Piece of String for their amusement, as a soldier who has 
seen service is asked to tell about his battles. His 
mind, attacked at its source, grew feebler. 

Late in December he took to his bed. 

In the first days of January he died, and in the delirium 
of the death agony he protested his innocence, repeating : 

"A little piece of string — a little piece of string — see, 
here it is, m'sieu' mayor." 

In all this you are not aware of the onlookers, nor do you 
see the tragedy through Hauchecorne's eyes. You get 
only the bald facts, and they speak for themselves. 
Their intrinsic and immediate power is the measure of the 
appropriateness of the objective angle of narration. This 
is the almost invariable rule. The more obvious and the 
more intense a story's events are, the more natural and 
successful the objective treatment will prove (if it can be 
employed at all). This becomes almost self-evident, once 
you scrutinize an instance. A plot whose every develop- 



178 SHORT STORY WRITING 

ment is as clear as day certainly calls for no interpretation, 
no posing, in order to sharpen it. And if its single effect 
is intense, what need is there of adding somebody's 
feelings and thoughts toward it? The story tells 
itself. 

It is not strange, then, that the best authors have seldom 
chosen the objective treatment without recourse to some 
other perspective in conjunction with it. This casts no 
reflection upon their technical skill; it only means that 
they do not conjure up or at least dislike to write about 
the obvious and the terrific. They are more interested 
in complications and aspects of human nature which call 
for diagnosis. Such affairs, not being self-evident, must 
be put in their true light; they must be shown up by some- 
body who perceives them from the one angle which most 
effectively reveals their bearings. 

A story told objectively throughout develops a speed 
and a directness rarely attained in any other way. It 
has no philosophical overture, no interpolations by the 
narrator, and very few elaborate descriptive passages. 
It also tends to employ only those events whose full 
significance is visible or audible to any witness. Hence 
it portrays no more of an emotion or a thought than 
straightway manifests itself unequivocally in outward ac- 
tion. For just so would a reporter write who had no 
inner, secret knowledge of what was passing in the 
characters' minds. 

The limitations of the objective treatment now appear. 
The consequences of fortune or misfortune upon a fixed 
human type it can present with matchless brilliancy. And 
the instinctive behavior of a fixed human type it can also 
render well. But it cannot depict the great crises of 
character. The invisible forces of life which do battle 
against one another in the mind of one who stands at 
a crossroads, the countering of impulse with impulse, 



THE POINT OF VIEW 179 

the still reasoning against vain pride or empty panic, 
the trembling anticipations, and the sting of memories — 
all these lie beyond its power. 

Once more, for corroboration, turn to Maupassant. 
Beyond dispute he is the master of masters in the realm 
of the dramatic story; also he champions the objective 
treatment with unreasonable pertinacity. He and all 
his disciples extol the impersonal manner above every 
other. And yet the master himself forsakes it, every 
time he dips into psychological analysis. Look once 
more to A Coward, and you will find many passages like 
these: 

A single thought hovered over his mind — 'a duel 7 — 
without arousing any emotion whatsoever. He had 
done what he should have done; he had shown himself to 
be what he ought to be. 

He examined these assembled letters, which seemed to 
him mysterious, full of vague meaning. Georges Lamil! 
Who was this man? What was his business? Why had he 
stared at that lady in such a way? Was it not disgusting 
that a stranger, an unknown, should cause such a change 
in one's life . ? No, of course he was not 

afraid, as he had determined to carry the thing through, 
as his mind was fully made up to fight, and not to tremble. 

Is it the narrator who says the viscount has done what 
he should have done? No, that is the viscount's own 
interpretation. Does Maupassant call it disgusting that 
a stranger should upset another's life? No again. The 
coward so construes the affair. And, what is still more 
to the point, these are thoughts which no objective nar- 
rator could observe or even infer, inasmuch as they find 
no expression in the viscount's outward acts. 

Maupassant wisely sacrificed his theory for art's 
sake; he shifts here back and forth from impersonal 
narrative to the viscount's point of view, to meet the 
demands now of visible drama and now of the inner 



180 SHORT STORY WRITING 

conflict. And so too does every skilled writer of psy- 
chological stories. 

The objective treatment also is ill suited to the at- 
mosphere story, though not incompatible with it. Un- 
like other types, the atmosphere story demands a certain 
wealth and delicacy of descriptive detail, inasmuch as it 
secures its strongest effect in a unified sensuous impression. 
Now, whether we are sharply aware of it or not, there 
is in us a natural tendency to associate such an impression 
with a person who is impressed; for the emotions that are 
woven into every well wrought description of places or 
people are thoroughly human, which is to say highly 
individual. Only one man in the world could experience 
that particular and unique blend of colors and flitting 
shadows and portentous little noises which filled the shop 
after Markheim slew the dealer. Only one man in the 
world could see and feel what Ligeia's husband did in his 
will-haunted bridal chamber. And so it fits in best with 
our long habituated expectations to let the report of 
such opulent sceneries come from a character in the story 
or, less appropriately, from an inactive witness. I cannot 
recall any famous atmosphere story which has been 
objectively told. And again let me cite the high priest 
of the objectivistic cult: in Moonlight Maupassant nar- 
rates the atmospheric movement (just before the de- 
nouement) from the Abbe Marignan's point of 
view. 

b. The angle of the inactive witness or hearer. This 
treatment is that which commonly yields an opening like 
that of Turgenieff's The Jew: 

"Pray tell us a story, Colonel/ ' we said at last to 
Nikolai Hitch. The Colonel smiled, emitted a stream of 
tobacco smoke through his moustache, passed his hand 
over his gray hair, stared at us, and meditated. . 
"Well then, listen," he began. 



THE POINT OF VIEW 181 

"It happened in the year '13, before Dantzig. I was 
then," etc., etc. 

In contrast to the highly artificial, sophisticated objec- 
tive treatment, this one is naive and instinctive. In a 
state of nature no man who has lived through an ad- 
venture, waking or dreaming, detaches himself from it in 
the telling. He says: 'I saw the man strike down his 
wife, and I heard her cry as she fell. I tell you! I went 
faint at the sight!' As literature has grown out of just 
such spoken narrative, it has inevitably brought over into 
the more deliberate printed form this habit. 

Being natural, the treatment is supposed to lend an 
air of reality to the narrative; and doubtless it does so 
when you know and trust the narrator, or when you have 
some other reason to suppose that the report is a matter of 
fact. A newspaper account of, say, a fire is likely to be 
more convincing, if it quotes an eye-witness at length; but 
it is, only because it purports to be true anyhow. Once 
forsake this intention, though, and the device loses all 
force. Thus it happens in literature. A novel or a story 
does not pretend to give straight facts, and only very 
young children fancy that it does. Fiction is fiction, and 
need not bolster itself with pretenses. If, then, the writer 
is to tell his story from the angle of the inactive witness or 
hearer, he must do so, not for the sake of creating the 
illusion of reality, but only in order to bring out the gen- 
uine story values, namely the dramatic action or the single 
effect. Now, under what circumstances are these height- 
ened or clarified thereby? There are four conspicuous 
cases. 

i. The surest case is that in which the narrator's 
mannerisms are an integral part of the single effect. 
Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus Stories illustrate this 
perfectly (though most of them are not genuine short 
stories). Half the charm of his queer tales from folk-lore 



182 SHORT STORY WRITING 

resides in old Uncle Remus, his dialect, and his quaint 
asides. So too with Kipling's Mulvaney stories, though in 
less degree; and, were Mulvaney wholly inactive in them, 
they would be a more pertinent instance for us. 

ii. A second case is detective and mystery stories. One 
of the method's gravest defects here becomes a virtue. The 
defect is its tendency to break up the main action, either 
by shifting the point of view back and forth between 
that of a character and that of the narrator, or else by 
cluttering the pages with the narrator's explanations and 
personal interpolations. Insufferable as all this is in most 
stories, it serves the mystery-monger well. It confuses 
and distracts the reader by shunting his attention fre- 
quently from the plot events to the thoughts of the 
narrator. Thus the connection between events is ob- 
scured, and they become more of a mystery than if they 
were given bald and direct, — which is precisely what the 
writer desires. We have already discussed this matter 
under the head of indirect plot action; but it is well to 
consider again the famous stories which exemplify the 
above principle. In Ligeia, which, though vastly more 
than a mystery story, is overhung with mystery, the 
narrator is almost an inactive witness of the events. 
The Gold Bug is narrated by Legrand's friend, who 
plays such a trifling part in the plot action that we 
scarcely have the right to esteem him a character. The 
Purloined Letter is told by Dupin's acquaintance, who is 
an absolute zero in the tale. Conan Doyle brings in 
the passive Dr. Watson to twist and obfuscate the prob- 
lems of crime which Sherlock Holmes confronts. William 
J. Locke, too, lets himself narrate many of the Joyous 
Adventures of Aristide Pujol. The list might be lengthened 
indefinitely, with some of E. W. Hornung's Witching Hill 
Stories well toward the bottom of it. 

Unfortunately, this method is too easy; for the inactive 



THE POINT OF VIEW 183 

narrator may jumble up the circumstances of the story 
so that all the great detectives in Christendom could not 
unravel it on his evidence alone. Realizing this, many 
good writers are tempted to fall back upon it, just to 
spare themselves the hard work of making the complica- 
tions themselves mysterious. Probably half the stories 
so told could be handled otherwise, and to great advantage. 
How simple it would have been for G. K. Chesterton to 
have cast his Father Brown stories in that mould! And 
how refreshing to find them in another. How easy for 
Henry Sydnor Harrison to have put his story of Mrs. 
Hindi l into the mouth of a wayfarer who overheard these 
amazing women in the Subway and followed them curi- 
ously! And what a wonderful thriller he has produced by 
not doing that! 

iii. A third instance of the method's utility is that of the 
story in which the dramatic quality of the plot can be 
brought out only by an impartial interpretation of the 
characters. The objective treatment will not suffice 
here inasmuch as it does not interpret; and the point of 
view of an active character will fail because, if consistent 
and true, it will not be fair to the other characters. 
There remains then only the method we are now consid- 
ering. 

A flawless specimen of this type is James Hopper's 
Memories in Men's Souls, which the student is advised 
to study closely. Its theme does not appear directly in 
the plot incidents; it is a thought which the romance 
awakens in the narrator. Hence, if the story were told 
objectively, we should get the romance, but not its 
import; and it is this import which contributes heavily 
to the single effect. On the other hand, were the romance 
told as it was seen by the business man or his sweetheart 
or her malevolent uncle, it would cease to be romance. 

1 McClure's, Sept., 1911 



184 SHORT STORY WRITING 

To the first two it was a sickening catastrophe from start 
to finish; and from the uncle's point of view, only the 
first brief movement could have been told at all, for he 
did not witness nor hear of the climax. Half the power 
of this exquisite narrative springs from the delicate 
veiling of the lovers' feelings at the climax. They are 
not suppressed — on the contrary, they are as clear as 
day. They are revealed by the narrator's personal 
conjectures as to what they must have been; and as he 
conjectures, he recalls the manner of the hero when the 
latter laid bare to him the whole adventure. No other 
device could vie with this here. 

iv. The fourth and last story type admitting of this 
treatment is the atmosphere story. As we have seen, de- 
scriptive events integrate best when frankly narrated 
from the point of view of somebody who witnesses the 
places and people described. The inactive witness or 
hearer may be that somebody, whenever the atmosphere 
does not figure so intimately in the plot action that its 
part cannot be understood save from an active character's 
point of view. For instance, the atmospheric effect in 
A Descent into the Maelstrom is not a dynamic factor in the 
adventure. That is to say, the fisherman was not sucked 
into the vortex by the hypnotic power of its appearance; 
nor is his behavior in any other way influenced by the 
color of the insane waters, or their roar, or the horrible 
shape of the gigantic funnel. Not these sensuous qualities 
but the thought of the consequences of his position 
finally brought him to that calm, almost disinterested 
contemplative reflection which lies beyond fear and which 
delivered him from the peril. Hence the atmosphere 
is painted largely by the fisherman's visitor. In Mark- 
heim, on the contrary, the ticking of the clocks in the 
shop and the patter of rain on the attic roof and the scurry- 
ing shuffle of wayfarers' feet outside are not mere scenic 



THE POINT OF VIEW 185 

trimmings. They lay hold of the murderer, they stir up 
vague fears in him, they prod him to think hard over his 
plight; and, of these thoughts the vision is born on 
which the action of the whole story hinges. How im- 
possible, then, to portray the fantastic interior save 
through Markheim's own eyes and ears — and conscience! 

c. The angle of a 'participant. In choosing the point 
of view of an active character, the writer who has grasped 
the principles above set forth will readily decide whether 
he ought to see the events through the eyes of a minor 
personage or in the dominant character's perspective. 
For, once it is clear that some active character should 
be chosen, the very reasons which settle that will also 
designate the particular character to be employed. 
Therefore we may discuss this narrative method without 
regard to the status of the character in the story. 

As usual, the ultimate criterion is the double ideal of 
the short story. The aim being to bring out both the dra- 
matic quality and the single effect, is it not self-evident 
that an active character's point of view shall be chosen 
only when it best reveals the particular swing and flavor of 
the plot? And all we have to ask is : when and where does 
it do that? We find two cases. 

i. First and most conspicuously, it does it in every story 
which aims primarily to depict the actual workings of 
character in a moral crisis. For only the character him- 
self can know and feel the forces at work; and it is nothing 
but that interplay of forces which constitutes the story 
material. Once more, Markheim may be passed out as a 
perfect sample. 

ii. The second type calling for this angle is the complica- 
tion story which turns upon an active character's ig- 
norance or misunderstanding. In The Tragic Years, 
by B. Paul Newman, 1 the main action is thus told, because 

1 Everybody's, May, 1910. 



186 SHORT STORY WRITING 

every consequential turn in it happens as a result of the 
lawyer's being ignorant of his son's nature. In that 
charming piece of sentiment, The Poet Who Saved His 
Youth, by Helen Sterling Thomas, 1 it is Peter's ignorance 
about the one fervent admirer of his verse which helps 
mightily to save his youth. And the whole point of 
Old Johnnie, by Barry Benefield, 2 turns upon Johnnie's 
mistaking a dressmaker's dummy for a live and wicked 
man. Hence again the participant's point of view is 
correctly taken. 

4. Angle of narration and grammatical form. In the lead- 
ing text-books on story technique the angle of narration 
and the grammatical form of narration (that is, the use of 
the first or the third person) are hopelessly confused and 
discussed as though they were identical. Esenwein even 
goes so far as to classify the angles of narration as varieties 
of the grammatical form, — which is about as absurd as to 
classify the story characters with respect to the number 
of syllables in their names. The truth is, there is no 
significant connection whatever between the perspective 
and the use of 'I' or 'he'. And the absolute proof of 
this is given in the fact that both the second and the third 
angles of narration may be correctly indicated in either 
the first or the third person. For instance, suppose that 
Jones' valet saw Jones kill Smith, and that, for some 
dramatic reason, the happenings that culminated in this 
tragedy are best told from the valet's point of view. Then 
the narrative may run thus: 

Yes, I was Jones' valet when he killed that scoundrel, 
Smith. A mysterious affair, sir; and though it's ten 
years gone, I've not stopped wondering yet why my 
master did it, etc., ad lib. 

'McClure's, July, 1910. 
*Scribner's, Dec, 1911. 



THE POINT OF VIEW 187 

Or it may with equal accuracy run thus: 
As he laid away Jones' shirts in the mahogany dresser, 
the valet let his eyes wander to the half -open door through 
which the sound of angry voices drifted. Yes, that was 
Mr. Smith in there, swearing. Why had he been coming 
so often of late? And why did Mr. Jones rage for hours 
after the fellow had gone? The valet shook his head 
. etc., and also ad lib. 

The reader may perform a similar experiment with the 
third angle. And he may do so even with the purely 
objective story too, which, one might reasonably suppose, 
could be narrated only in the third person. It is con- 
ceivable, for instance, that a witness or minor participant 
in an episode might recount the latter impersonally and 
yet speak in the first person. He might say: "I was 
standing on the drug store steps when the messenger came 
up. He thrust the letter into my hand and fell exhausted 
. . . " This use of 'I' is quite objective and impersonal; 
it is merely a way of naming a participant in the story. 
It does not bring with it the slightest distortion or artificial 
arrangement of circumstances. It does not express feeling 
or opinion. It is as colorless and transparent as 'John 
Smith' or 'he\ Cases like these prove that it cannot 
be the perspective which decides the grammatical form. 
On the contrary, the latter is properly determined by the 
material of the particular story, even as the perspective 
itself is. 



188 SHORT STORY WRITING 



Exercises 



Find the angle of narration which will best bring out 
the seriousness of the following episode. Find the angle 
that shows up the harshness of the legal technicality 
which holds a poor man under such circumstance. Find 
the angle which emphasizes the negro's foolishness. 

Frank Ayers, a negro driver of the Street Cleaning De- 
partment, wearing his uniform, was arraigned in the 
Men's Night Court last evening on a charge of petty 
larceny, and declared that the city's delay in paying 
employes had driven him to steal. He pleaded guilty to 
the theft of a bottle of catsup, three bottles of Oxford 
sauce, one box of herring, a jar of jelly, and a package of 
macaroni. 

His wife and children were starving and he had also 
been forced to go without food, he told Magistrate House, 
because he could not get the money the city owed him. 
His story so impressed Magistrate House that he asked 
the complainant, William H. Dillon, a store detective, 
if he intended to press the charge. 

Magistrate House told Ayers he felt sorry for him, 
but could not do otherwise than hold him for trial in 
Special Sessions. 

Street Cleaning Commissioner Edwards said last night 
that there had been a delay of a week or two in paying the 
employes of his department, because of a new system which 
required the approval of the Civil Service Commission 
before the pay rolls go to the Controller. Commis- 
sioner Edwards said the men would get their pay in a day 
or two. 

What is the angle of narration in each of the following? 
Is the angle well chosen? Explain your answer accu- 
rately. Is the artist's attitude discernible at all? If so, 
describe it. 



EXERCISES 189 

1. Hamlin, Pauline Worth — The Gold Pot. {American, 
July, 1912.) 

2. Child, Richard Washburn — The Eyes of the Gazelle. 
(Harper's, April, 1912.) 

3. Freeman, Mary Wilkins — The Steeple. (Hampton's, 
Oct., 1911.) 

4. Dudeney, Mrs. Henry — The Secret Shelf. (Harper's, 
July, 1912.) 

In Vol. 8 of the collection entitled Stories by American 
Authors (Scribner's) you will find a story by Elizabeth 
Stuart Phelps called Zerviah Hope, which is hopelessly 
botched because the author has not duly regarded the 
angle of narration. Find what this angle should be and 
rewrite the story from it, taking pains not to modify the 
incidents and character traits. 



190 SHORT STORY WRITING 



5. The artist's attitude. We have now to consider 
briefly that other kind of point of view which, at the close 
of section 2 above, we distinguished from the angle of nar- 
ration. About it we cannot say much, for it and its prob- 
lems lie far beyond the province of this book. The artist's 
attitude is not a matter of technique. It is what it is, and 
all attempts to guide it by formulas are futile. I do not 
mean that a teacher cannot profoundly influence a stu- 
dent's tastes and even his natural manner of expression. 
He certainly can. But this influence cannot be charted, 
and still less can it be located anywhere in the materials or 
the methods of fiction. It works through discussions 
about the nature of things, through debates over ideals, 
through study of rights and wrongs. In short, it is 
an influence of culture; and, like culture, it is neither 
reading, writing, nor arithmetic, nor any other body of 
fact or technique. It is the directing of appetities, likes 
and dislikes, sensitivities and prejudices. 

This cultural influence may be insignificant or enormous, 
as we see from a comparison of the two types of literary 
genius, the genius from within and the genius from with- 
out. The former, of whom Poe is the perfect specimen, 
is endowed with a unique fancy and a preference for cer- 
tain thoughts and emotions to which his environment 
neither adds nor takes away appreciably. The latter 
type, which is best exemplified in our own country by 
Hawthorne, likewise possess great native gifts; but 
these, under the influence of his training and surround- 
ings, are directed toward the familiar ideals and beliefs 
of early New England. How far one's aptitudes may 
thus be guided depends entirely upon the individual 
and the themes to which he is to be turned. And, as his 
choice of themes inevitably precedes his writing about 



THE ARTIST'S ATTITUDE 191 

them, so his attitude precedes all literary manipulation. 

6. The artist's attitude and his style. In ordinary discourse 
' style' is a blanket term covering at least three things: 
(1) the qualities of a narrative which are determined by 
the theme and the plot action; (2) the qualities of grammar 
and language, as such ; and (3) the qualities which express 
the author's attitude toward the theme or plot action. 
In most cases these three may be distinguished readily 
enough; but an illustration is not amiss. Suppose you 
are writing a story in which, at a critical moment, the 
heroine dropped her eyes demurely under the gaze of a 
jealously suspicious admirer; and he, misunderstand- 
ing her act, hurled an accusation or stalked off or caught 
her hand or did something else which complicated affairs 
vitally. If, now, you write: 'The girl gazed at the carpet, 
feigning modesty' — the mere mention of the act would be 
a case of the first 'style'. If you write 'feigning modesty', 
instead of the neater adverb, 'demurely', this is the 
second 'style'. And if, finally, your scorn for the heroine 
runs away with you, and you let it speak out in the 
sentence, thus: 'The sly-boots gazed at the carpet 
feigning modesty' — then you are exhibiting 'style' 
number three, provided that there is, in the plot itself, 
no dramatic necessity for your calling the girl names. 

The student may have been wondering throughout 
this book why it does not preach style and tell how to 
attain it. The explanation is now at hand. 

Style, in the first sense, is the result of mastering story 
technique; in the second sense, it is the result of mastering 
grammar and rhetoric; and, in the third sense, it is the 
result of the artisfs attitude toward his material and all that 
pertains to it. 

Now, this book is devoted to the problems of technique; 
hence, what of style derives from the manipulation of 
dramatic material is to be attained only by becoming 



192 SHORT STORY WRITING 

skilful in that manipulation. For, to repeat with another 
accent, style is not a quality in the material, but a con- 
sequence of handling the latter. In the second place, 
linguistic style lies beyond the present undertaking. 
The pursuit of it should largely precede technique, inas- 
much as many structural problems^ — and, above all, the 
producing of the single effect — call for considerable facility 
with words. Finally, style that expresses the author's 
point of view is gained only through that point of view. 
But this is the result of natural disposition and culture. 
To seek these in technique would be as foolish as to seek, 
in elocution and stagecraft, the power of composing 
Hamlet's soliloquy. 



ATMOSPHERE 193 



Sub-Chapter E. — Atmosphere. 

1. What atmosphere is. In the painter's art atmosphere 
means 'the feeling or effect, as of air, light, space, or 
warmth, given as an environment of any sub j ect ' . (Stan- 
dard Dictionary.) Thus, the atmosphere of Rembrandt's 
masterpiece, The Night Watch, is the quite indescribable 
enrichening influence of a peculiarly mellow amber light 
which suffuses the scene. In literature the word describes 
a quality of the story setting and staging. It is the emo- 
tional flavor of the place and time in which the dramatic 
events unfold. For instance, in Stevenson's tale, The 
Merry Men, it is the feeling awakened by the Scotch coast 
around Aros, where 'great granite rocks . . . go down to- 
gether in troops into the sea, like cattle on a summer's day.' 

There they stand, for all the world like their neighbors 
ashore ; only the salt water sobbing between them instead 
of the quiet earth, and clots of sea-pink blooming on their 
sides instead of heather, and the great sea conger to 
wreathe about the base of them instead of the poisonous 
viper of the land. . . . 

I have often been out there in a dead calm at the slack 
of the tide; and a strange place it is, with the sea swirling 
and coming up and boiling like the cauldrons of a linn, 
and now and again a little dancing mutter of sound as 
though the Roost were talking to itself. 

Many students get the notion that environment is 
atmosphere. And so they fall into the technical blunder 
of trying to produce atmosphere by elaborate descriptions 
of scenery. Their belief is false, and their practice only 
occasionally sound. The atmosphere is, be it repeated, 
the impression which environment makes upon the 



194 SHORT STORY WRITING 

beholder and which the beholder, in writing, seeks to 
convey to his readers. 1 

It is, if you will allow the phrase, the rock-and-water 
feeling which Aros aroused in Stevenson. This feeling 
is not in the rocks and the sea; it is in their beholder. 
They only stir him; the response is his own, private, 
unique, and in some respects spontaneous. 

This response is quite mysterious. Nothing in the 
scene clearly accounts for its precise quality, any more 
than the known chemical structure of alcohol explains 
the unique exhilaration that comes from drinking wine. 
Poe has given perfect utterance to this fact in his match- 
less atmosphere story, The Fall of the House of Usher, from 
which we cannot cite too often: 

What was it — I paused to think — what was it that so 
unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? 
It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with 
the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. 
I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclu- 
sion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of 
very simple natural objects which have the power of thus 
affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among 

1 1 cannot resist calling attention to the error of some excellent 
critics and scholars who give to the art of producing atmosphere the 
name of Impressionism. Nothing warrants this designation. Im- 
pressionism is the theory and practice of reporting scenes and events 
in terms of their immediately sensed colors, sounds, forms, flavors, 
and other primitive qualities. The impressionist's ideal is to render 
only that much of the world which is given to him in raw sensation. 
The ideal of the atmospheric painter or writer, on the contrary, is 
to transmit the peculiar and full reality of scenes. To accomplish 
this, he does not limit himself to his own immediate impressions. 
He often draws Upon his subtlest analogies and his most tediously 
wrought reflections. Anything that will produce the desired effect 
upon the reader is eligible. Of course, it commonly happens that a 
writer of atmosphere uses impressionistic material, but this is only 
because the latter chances to convey the desired effect. His very 
next scene may be handled in a wholly different manner. 



ATMOSPHERE 195 

considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I 
reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the par- 
ticulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be 
sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity 
for sorrowful impression. . . . 

This conjecture of Poe's has been confirmed by modern 
psychology in many fascinating experiments. Even in 
simple geometrical figures, minute alterations produce a 
complete transformation of one's feeling toward them. 
Erase from a circle only a very small arc, and instantly 
your perception of it is tinged afresh; and your thoughts 
sent scurrying up strange little lanes and alleys of memory. 
You may now say, with infinitesimal pain, that a perfect 
figure has been marred; and the ruin of it may, of a 
sudden, resemble C, or perhaps the ground plan of a 
corral, or the cross-section of a bomb, or any of a thousand 
other queer things. To physician and psychologist, this 
hypersensitivity of the normal mind to microscopical 
changes in objects perceived is a matter of absorbing 
interest. To the story writer it is a source of immeasur- 
able artistic possibilities. Thanks to it, the variety of 
esthetic effects in the handling of even commonplace 
scenes is prodigious. In comparison with it, man's 
impressions of dramatic action are singularly few. 

2. Atmosphere as the single effect of a story. This last 
circumstance tempts many a novice to write atmosphere 
stories. And almost inevitably he comes to grief, because 
the atmosphere story is very different from a story with 
atmosphere. This distinction, which wiser heads than 
his frequently overlook, must now be explained. 

Every story whose setting must be staged at all may 
have atmosphere. A Lover of Flowers, or almost any other 
of Mary Wilkins Freeman's New England sketches, has 
it unmistakably. A Pair of Patient Lovers, like most of 
Howells' stories, also possesses it in measurable degree. 



196 SHORT STORY WRITING 

Likewise with the works of nearly every experienced 
author. Thin it may be, or unconvincing; yet it is there. 
You receive a definite impression and feeling of the place 
and time in which the events unfold. The two are not 
merely reported to you. Something of their lights and 
shadows reaches you through the printed page; the breezes 
from the written hills cool you, and in your heart burns 
warm the cheer of storied firesides. 

But usually the atmosphere differs in emotional value 
from the characters and the plot action. Sometimes it 
stands in sharp contrast to the latter pair; as in Moon- 
light, where the languorous, dreamy, bewitching mid- 
summer night shines with a light most unlike that in the 
hard face of the bigoted, woman-hating Abbe. And 
when there is no such contrast, the atmosphere is almost 
certain to play a subordinate part in toning the story, as 
in The Piece of String, where the vivid picture of market- 
day at Goderville harmonizes with the earthy Norman 
thrift, slyness, and simple honesty of the people in the 
tragedy. Now, in neither of these typical instances have 
we an atmosphere story, because their setting does not 
fix the narrative's tone, dominate it, and produce its 
single effect. All of which is a negative way of saying 
that the atmosphere story is one in which character and com- 
plication are integrated with and intensify the setting, which 
latter produces the single effect. As Stevenson puts it, in 
his much-quoted conversation with Graham Balfour: 
"You may take a certain atmosphere and get action and 
persons to express and realize it. I'll give you an example 
— The Merry Men. There I began with the feeling of one 
of those islands on the west coast of Scotland, and I 
gradually developed the story to express the sentiment 
with which the coast affected me." 

3. Why the atmosphere story is difficult. A brief con- 
sideration of this structural peculiarity reveals the in- 



ATMOSPHERE 197 

trinsic difficulty of the atmosphere story. When the 
setting of an episode fixes the tone, and the other dramatic 
factors simply intensify it, obviously the emotions aroused 
by the characters and by the events must resemble, in 
some detectible measure, the emotions of the atmosphere. 
If the scene is pervaded with gloom, the hero must stalk 
up and down his dim apartment, gnawing his beard. If, 
on the contrary, the hills clap their hands for joy, the 
heroine must join in smartly. This sounds like a very 
simple formula, but it is not. Two mighty obstacles con- 
front the writer: (a) the narrow range of atmospheric 
effects, and (b) the lack of harmony between man and 
Nature, with respect to the feelings each arouses in an 
observer. 

a. The narrow range of atmospheric effects. In asserting 
that the range of atmospheric effects is narrow, we seem 
to be contradicting our previous statement about their 
prodigious variety. Range and variety, however, do not 
mean the same. Range means the extent of variation; 
as when we speak of the range of the human voice. The 
distance separating the extreme members of any class or 
species is the range of that species. Variety, on the other 
hand, refers to the number of distinctions within the 
species. A moment's reflection on these terms will assure 
you that no connection exists between the range and the 
variety of anything in the world. For instance, the range 
of a piano — seven octaves and a quarter — exceeds that 
of a violin which covers about three octaves. But the 
variety of a violin is many times as great as that of a 
piano, for the piano can sound only twelve different tones 
between each octave, while the violin readily sounds fifty 
or more, whose differences only the most sensitive ear can 
detect. 

Now, this contrast appears in all the activities of the 
human mind. The variety of odors which the normal man 



198 SHORT STORY WRITING 

senses is very great, but it is slight beside that of the lights 
and colors which he readily perceives. He distinguishes 
a few thousand smells — four or five, at most; but his eye 
reveals to him over thirty-six thousand hues. Neverthe- 
less, the range of the odors is incomparably vaster than 
that of colors. The difference between the smell of sandal- 
wood and that of sour milk is wider than the difference 
between the gayest yellow and the dullest dark blue. 
Turpentine is more unlike roasted coffee than green is 
unlike red. And so generally, even in those complex and 
elusive feelings which the story teller stirs up. 

Take as a well marked instance the emotions awakened 
by the contemplation of scenery. No two landscapes 
make quite the same impression upon the spectator, and 
so there are truly as many distinct emotions as there are 
combinations of sunlight, breeze, outdoor warmth, hills, 
dells, and crags. But, on the other hand, between the 
most terrible, most overwhelming of Nature's patterns 
and the gentlest of her green fields and still waters, the 
difference of quality is comparatively slight. But few 
fundamental types appear; there is the f rightfulness of 
the volcanic eruption; the sublimity of iceberg, mountain, 
and roaring mid-ocean; the depressing dulness of a gray 
prairie day; the slumbrous comfort of summer afternoon; 
and a few other varieties. But all the pleasant impres- 
sions resemble one another in some underlying character- 
istic in which a simple animal joy predominates, 
while all the unpleasant seem merely so many shadings 
of three things: panic, temperature, and color feelings. 
I do not believe that the latter reduce to such a simple 
triad of factors. Air pressure and the movements of 
physical objects certainly give rise to their own peculiar 
feelings, although I seldom find myself able to distinguish 
these in contemplating a landscape. Doubtless many 
other forces are at work here too. But the question of 



ATMOSPHERE 199 

fact here is quite irrelevant to our inquiry, inasmuch as we 
are dealing exclusively with the quality of impressions; 
and beyond all dispute the latter show nothing of the 
tremendous difference which everybody feels in con- 
templating the deeds of men. 

b. The lack of harmony between the two kinds of feelings. 
Human acts seem to fall into great constellations which 
are farther apart than the stars. Consider only those two 
which most concern the writer of fiction: tragedy and 
comedy. They have nothing whatever in common, inso- 
far as the quality of their emotions is concerned. They 
differ in that same profound manner in which hircine 
odors differ from fragrances. It is a difference, not of 
degree, but of kind. You cannot pass from one to the 
other by slight gradations, as you can pass from the joy 
of a noontide landscape to the melancholy of sunset simply 
by reducing the amount of light that falls upon the scene. 
A still sharper contrast might be drawn between esthetic 
and moral feelings, which, in spite of an indubitable 
kinship in their origins, fall quite apart in their mature 
modes. But such analyses belong to esthetics, not to the 
technique of fiction; so we must waive them. We have 
made our point, that the range of atmospheric effects is 
slight; and, in bringing this out, we have also indicated 
the wider scope of emotions drawn from human conduct, 
which is the subject matter of dramatic narrative. 
We now return to our technical issue : what trouble does 
all this make for the writer of atmosphere stories? 

The trouble is that, because of the naturally wide range 
of dramatic qualities (those of character and complication, 
I mean), these cannot be forced to intensify the quality of the 
story setting except by our artificially narrowing them. And 
this narrowing can generally be accomplished only through 
the use of abnormal or impossible characters and compli- 
cations. But to work up such material into coherent 



200 SHORT STORY WRITING 

action is a task of exceeding difficulty, calling for the 
highest order of creative imagination. In the final analy- 
sis, it is hard because both the purpose of it and the pro- 
cedure run contrary to our habits of life. For an elucida- 
tion of these points, let us once more inspect The Fall of 
the House of Usher. 

The 'insufferable gloom' which is the single effect here 
has been intensified with consummate skill by the char- 
acter delineation of Roderick Usher and his sister and by 
the insidious, mystifying catastrophes befalling them and 
their domicile. But observe at what cost this has been 
accomplished. Gloom is deepened only by whatsoever 
produces gloom. And the only thing in human nature 
which produces it is the mood itself, or at least some of 
its bodily manifestations. In Nature, the gray of low- 
hung clouds or of a winter sea may evoke that hue of 
melancholy; but the gray of aged hairs or of anemic cheeks 
will not. In other words, the causes of the mood in Nature 
and in man are disparate; the former induces it through 
simple colors and sounds and forms, while the latter does so 
only through sympathetically affecting his beholder. The 
beholder must perceive such lineaments and behavior as 
the guest of Roderick Usher noted in his host. Then will 
the feelings associated with them well up in their witness. 1 
It is by a sort of instinctive interpretation — or shall we 
say an imitation? — that this happens, whereas, in the 

1 Thia is not what happens in perceiving a humorous character; 
for what amuses the spectator of a man who is doing something comi- 
cal may not be comical to the man himself. It may be humiliating 
and painful. But this exception does not detract from its present 
application to the atmosphere story. And the reason is that the 
comic cannot be used as the single effect of an atmosphere story, inas- 
much as there is no humor in mere Nature. It is never the setting 
which supplies that peculiar and baffling incongruity that moves us 
to laughter. The comic exists only in thought about intents, ideals, 
and achievements. 



ATMOSPHERE 201 

melancholy brought on by natural scenes, there seems to 
be nothing more than a little understood chemical process 
which certain light waves, air pressures, and temperatures 
set up in the nervous system. 

Now, it happens — probably by the merest coincidence 
— that some of the feelings caused by these chemisms 
closely resemble those associated with certain thoughts. 
Thus the melancholy of a dull landscape is much like the 
melancholy attending Usher's thought of Lady Madeline's 
approaching dissolution. Hence it is that the latter may 
be used to intensify the former. But there are very few 
thoughtful feelings which resemble the other kind sufficiently 
to be so employed. The feelings of dramatic action and the 
still larger, more alien class of ethical emotions have no 
counterpart in mere scenic effects; at most, they remotely 
suggest a few of the latter. Therefore, they cannot serve 
to intensify atmosphere. And because of this a character 
which is used to this end must almost invariably be depicted 
so as to present, in strong exaggeration, some undramatic, 
non-ethical, and even passive trait. Roderick Usher per- 
fectly illustrates this limitation. In mien and behavior 
he is a mortal the like of which never walked this earth 
of ours. 

. . . The character of his face had been at all times 
remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye 
large, liquid and luminous beyond comparison; lips some- 
what thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful 
curve: . . . these features, with an inordinate expan- 
sion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a 
countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the 
mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these 
features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, 
lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. 
The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miracu- 
lous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even 
awed me. . . . The silken hair, too, had been suffered 
to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, 



202 SHORT STORY WRITING 

it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even 
with effort, connect its arabesque expression with any idea of 
simple humanity. 

Please note this very last clause, which I have italicized. 
To my mind it indicates that Poe comprehended and 
deliberately practiced the very principle of character 
drawing just laid down. For the sake of deepening the 
insufferable gloom of the setting, he sacrificed the very 
humanity of Usher. Every succeeding paragraph of the 
story confirms this a little more. Ask yourself about 
Usher's conduct. Think of his fluctuating voice, " vary- 
ing rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal 
spirits seem utterly in abeyance) to that species of ener- 
getic concision— that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and 
hollow-sounding enunciation — that leaden, self-balanced, 
and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be 
observed in the lost drunkard . . ." Was there ever 
such a voice? And does the lost drunkard possess it? 
I do not believe it, and neither did Poe. Usher's 'morbid 
acuteness of the senses', on the other hand, is commonly 
found, but always in neurasthenics and other ailing folk. 
Likewise with his vague, objectless fears. But his wild 
improvisations on the guitar, his phantasmagoric paint- 
ings, his spontaneous poetizing, and the wild reading from 
insane books, — all these in combination can belong only 
to a dream-creature. He is the passive victim of circum- 
stances. He is stripped of all moral power, as far removed 
from virtue and vice as the lowest brutes are. And there 
resides in him no other impulse, no other appetite, no 
other idea, no other purpose save such as are born of his 
morbidity. In short, he is not a man — as Poe says can- 
didly — but a commiserable lunatic, and such a one as 
alienist never looked upon. 

If, now, intensification of the setting requires, that 
human nature be thus falsified, does not the discomfiture 



ATMOSPHERE 203 

of the would-be writer of atmosphere stories appear with- 
out further ado? Just as it is easy to lie magnificently 
but very hard to lie persuasively, so it is simple enough to 
twist the stuff of human life into terrifically sombre or 
horrible or exciting fictions but almost impossible to make 
the people in such fictions coherent enough to produce the 
illusion of life. The ultimate cause of this difficulty we 
have already mentioned. It is the very fact to which 
Poe alludes with such timely acumen: the quality of each 
individual object we perceive does not reside in its parts 
or elements, as such, but in some elusive peculiarity of 
their combination and interrelating. To speak in the 
tongue of psychology, each entity has its own unique 
form-quality; and what this is, no man can deduce from 
the thing's isolated constituents. It follows, then, that 
the writer who disintegrates, in imagination, a human life 
and then integrates some of the fragments, to heighten 
the atmosphere's quality, must proceed blindly and by 
the merest guess-work, nine times out of ten. 

Few are the men who have triumphed over this obstacle, 
and even they bear witness to its stubbornness. Their 
pages show many a scar of battle with the all-but-impos- 
sible. Poe's heroes and villains, marvelously constructed 
though they are, are not people at all. Stevenson's are 
vastly more human and comprehensible, although often 
either puppets with only clothes and mien to match the 
atmosphere — as in The Merry Men — or else not intensi- 
fiers at all — as in Will o' the Mill, where the love story 
of the miller's boy and the parson's Marjory, though 
profoundly colored and shaped by the environment, 
nevertheless takes its own course and turns the reader 
from the wonderful atmosphere. Even more instructive 
than Poe and Stevenson, though, is Joseph Conrad, who 
certainly ranks as the master of masters in the narrow, 
lofty kingdom of Atmosphere. His finest work, Almayer's 



204 SHORT STORY WRITING 

Folly, certainly equals the best of Poe, who is Conrad's 
only serious rival. To quote a recent reviewer: "What 
impresses one most in re-reading this tragedy of a Bornean 
river is the wonderful color-effects that lie hidden in its 
words. The story is almost subordinate in interest to the 
tawny Oriental landscape, with its loneliness, treachery, 
and hint of life's brevity. . . . Over against the ineffec- 
tual littleness of the men who creep along the lonely 
river's banks is set the mighty majesty of nature. It is 
this element which lends the story grandeur and helps 
it to outwear time." 1 This comment accurately touches 
both the strength and the weakness of Conrad, and so of 
the atmosphere story as a species. The landscape sub- 
ordinates the story, as it should; but in doing so it mini- 
mizes dramatic movement and integrity of character. 
Hence the result is, if nothing worse, sluggish; and it is 
very likely to give us, instead of people, fantastic frag- 
ments and jumbles of human traits. Now, by sheer 
genius, Conrad shuns this graver catastrophe, but he 
falls victim to the lesser one. Let the student read care- 
fully — and sympathetically — Conrad's collection of short 
stories entitled Tales of Unrest. 2 He will find that, while 
the dramatic conceptions are strong, they drag, at times 
most painfully. The very shadows on the ground are 
stumbling-blocks to the people here, the breezes halt 
their speech, and the day's heat wilts their judgment. To 
be sure, all this is not enough to mar the special beauty 
of Conrad very much, and it is a slight failure in compari- 
son with his awe-inspiring power of description. But it 
exemplifies the atmosphere story's supreme difficulty 
where this difficulty has been most nearly overcome. 
3. The natural theme of the atmosphere story. The 
student who has thoughtfully followed the above com- 

1 Coningsby Dawson, in Everybody's, September, 1912. 
2 Scribner's. 



ATMOSPHERE 205 

ments will doubtless discover for himself that there is at 
least one subject and one type of plot which can turn to 
profit all the inconveniences of the atmosphere story. It 
is the story of the triumphant environment; of which 
there are two opposite types. The first is the story 
wherein we see men and women moulded by the blind 
forces of Nature, and human beliefs and aspirations shown 
to be vain delusions, empty hopes in a hopeless world. Of 
this sort is everything that Thomas Hardy has written. 
His minor tales, such as Life's Little Ironies, smoothly fit 
Prosser Hall Frye's characterization of their author's theme : 

But with him this varied region (Egdon Heath, the 
locus of The Return of the Native) . . . is no longer 
mere scenery, the spectacular decoration of an indifferent 
comedy, wherein man moves untouched save for some 
occasional vaporous sentimentality. On the contrary, 
it has been promoted to a fatal and grandiose complicity 
in human affairs, of a piece with destiny, overpowering the 
minds of the actors, tyrannizing over their lives and for- 
tunes, and appearing in any one locality as but the par- 
ticular agency and manifestation of a single consistent, 
universal power. 1 

The other type of story theme is Hawthorne's. Here 
again, something in the setting dominates events and the 
people in them; but it is no longer blind Nature, it is the 
Moral Law — or, if you like, God — and on the other side, 
the Devil. Every reader of Hawthorne is perfectly 
familiar with this supernatural drama; but it will do no 
harm to quote from Frye's admirable interpretation of it: 

The Puritans themselves, his ancestors, were dominated 
by a single idea . . . the idea of duty and guilt, of 
something owing God and of man's inability to redeem the 
debt by his own efforts. Under the influence of this idea 
their life had undergone a momentous transformation. . . . 
To all appearances it was with the inclemency of the 

1 Reviews and Criticisms, 107. 



206 SHORT STORY WRITING 

weather, the hostility of the elements, at most the enmity 
of the savages that they were contending. In reality this 
was all but a veil; it was the devil and his ministers, the 
forces of darkness and evil, the powers of hell that disputed 
with them for the salvation of their souls. And so to their 
excited imagination the conflict took on a solemn and 
grandiose significance. . . . Nothing was too small or 
remote to remain aloof or unaffected; there were signs in 
heaven and on earth, omens and portents and fore- 
warnings, earthquake, meteor and eclipse, or dream and 
vision. . . . The world of spirits was divided in their 
quarrel, while reality itself was a mask, which might serve 
indifferently for the covert of a friend or the ambush of a 
foe.i 

Is it not plain why stories spun around such a world- 
view heighten their atmospheric effect less disastrously 
than the more realistic variety of fiction does? It is 
because their dramatic factors are not in the people but 
in the setting itself, and hence the weaker, illusory crises 
in the thoughts and feelings of hero and heroine which the 
atmosphere tends to dampen are not a true part of the 
deeper complication. They are puppets, not through the 
writer's clumsy portrayal but because they really are 
nothing more than the creatures of some Hidden 
Showman. They are inactive through no sluggishness of 
the author's style but only because they are, by inmost 
nature, passive victims of cosmic circumstance. In 
short, the active force which, in ordinary dramatic narra- 
tive, wells up only in men and women now displays itself 
as a potency of the environment, which therewith becomes, 
so far as the emotional effect upon readers is concerned, a 
character. Be it blind Nature or be it a god, in either 
case this environment is endowed with a kind of person- 
ality having aims and human ways of doing. Its plans 
may be past understanding, but only by reason of secrets 

1 Reviews and Criticisms. 122 fL 



ATMOSPHERE 207 

withheld from us and not because their logic and their 
emotional springs are alien to our minds. 

We may finish the matter with a paradox: The atmos- 
phere story is easiest in which the setting is not setting 
at all but the dominant character in a drama without 
setting. In Stevenson Nature is often the leading lady; in 
Poe, Conrad, Hardy and most other atmospherists, it is 
the villain; and in Hawthorne it is sometimes the hero's 
silhouette. But in all these realms of fancy, it is the great 
original man without a country. Nature has no environ- 
ment, and God is without a dwelling place. Beyond 
them, there is neither time nor place. 

4. Atmosphere as an intensifier. Thougn the genuine 
atmosphere story has narrow range and presents all but 
insuperable obstacles, the story with atmosphere is mod- 
erately easy to manipulate, plastic, and highly adaptable 
to all moods. By the story with atmosphere I mean, of 
course, a narrative wherein the tone of the setting is made 
to reinforce either the theme of a thematic development, 
or the dominant character of a character story, or the 
complication of a complication story. Almost every 
good author employs atmosphere thus, with some degree 
of skill and charm. And its employment is governed by a 
few rules which can be formulated with some accuracy, 
though not with as much as we might wish. In the main, 
they are merely special applications of principles we have 
already become familiar with. 

a. The intensifying effect is conveyed best by a charac- 
terization of the effect itself rather than by a description of 
the objects which, in assemblage, give rise to it. At first 
reading, this may sound either meaningless or at least 
unprofitable. Of course the effect is most vivid when 
characterized, you may say; so the advice is idle. But 
such an observation misses the point, which is that char- 
acterization of causes is by no means the same as characteri- 



208 SHORT STORY WRITING 

zation of their effects. This is one of the most important 
facts in all artistic technique, be it the technique of story 
writing or of sculpture or of etching. It is no peculiar 
secret of art, but a general fact true of all causes and all 
effects. The physicist may describe to you ever so faith- 
fully the nature of electricity and especially the differ- 
ences of potential that go with differences of temperature. 
But all this will not give you a picture of the thunderclap 
which follows the flash of lightning. For here, and every- 
where else, there is some unique quality in the effect which 
the cause does not possess and which therefore cannot be 
described in terms of the cause. Illustrations from fiction, 
however, will doubtless guide the learner more surely; 
so let us press into service that master of happy charac- 
terization, Daudet, and then contrast with him the least 
happy of all characterizers among writers of repute, 
namely Mary Wilkins Freeman. 

In The Lighthouse of the Sanguinaires Daudet is depict- 
ing at the outset the coast of the island where the 
episode unrolls. In the midst of the picture comes this: 

. . . When the mistral or the tramontana did not blow 
too hard, I would seat myself between two rocks at the 
water's edge, amid the gulls and blackbirds and swallows, 
and I would stay there almost all day in that sort of stupor 
and delicious prostration which are born of gazing at the 
sea. You know, do you not, that pleasant intoxication 
of the mind? You do not think ; you do not dream. Your 
whole being escapes you, flies away — is scattered about. 
You are the gull that plunges into the sea, the spray that 
floats in the sunlight between two waves — the white smoke 
of yonder steamer rapidly disappearing. . . . 

Here you have an extreme instance, in which the details 
of the scene are either ignored or baldly mentioned, and 
the whole quality of it made known through the mental 
effect the place makes upon the narrator. Powerful this 
device is, provided the reader is familiar with the hypnotic 



ATMOSPHERE 209 

drowsiness which the sea induces; but it fails sadly, if he 
has never experienced it. In the latter case there always 
remains a second method, namely that of describing the 
material effect of the setting upon persons or things in it. 
Thus, in The Little Pies: 

It was a magnificent morning, one of those bright, 
sunny May mornings which fill the fruit-shops with clus- 
ters of cherries and bunches of lilac. 

Or again, in The Pope's Mule: 

He who never saw Avignon in the time of the Popes has 
seen nothing. . . . Ah! the happy days! the happy 
city! Halberds that did not wound, state prisons where 
they put wine to cool. No famines; no wars. 

And, as a last sample, the fine handling in The Elixir of 
Father Gaucher: 

Twenty years ago, the Premontres, or the White 
Fathers, as we Provencals call them, had fallen into utter 
destitution. If you could have seen their convent in those 
days, it would have made your heart ache. 

The high wall, the Pacome Tower, were falling to pieces. 
All around the grass-grown cloisters, the pillars were 
cracked, the stone saints crumbling in their recesses. 
Not a stained glass window whole, not a door that would 
close. In the courtyard, in the chapels, the wind from the 
Rhone blew as it blows in Camargue, extinguishing the 
candles, breaking the leaden sashes of the windows, 
spilling the water from the holy-water vessels. But 
saddest of all was the convent belfry, silent as an empty 
dove-cote; and the fathers, in default of money to buy a 
bell, were obliged to ring for matins with clappers of 
almond-wood. 

These are all perfect, and because Daudet has clearly 
grasped and applied the profound truth that we judge 
things most acutely by their consequences. Notice 
especially the simple skill of the first quotation. Instead 
of drawing an elaborate picture of a May morning, Daudet 



210 SHORT STORY WRITING 

simply tells you the effect it had upon the fruit-shops. 
Here his technique is clear as day, whereas in the second 
citation it is not. The reader probably will have to stop 
and think that, when the author says: "Halberds that 
did not wound, state prisons where they put wine to cool," 
he is deftly naming the results of the peaceful rule of the 
Popes in Avignon. But, once you think about it, there 
can be no doubt that this is precisely what he is doing. 

Contrast with these exquisite passages the opening 
description of the Munson house, in Mrs. Freeman's 
A Symphony in Lavender. Before criticizing it, we 
must recall that, in this story, the setting ought to 
integrate naturally with the dramatic action; for the 
sight of the house and its adornments indirectly leads 
the narrator into contact with the heroine and, as the title 
indicates, sets the tone of the story. 

. . . The first object in Ware, outside of my immediate 
personal surroundings, which arrested my attention was 
the Munson house. When I looked out of my window the 
next morning it loomed up directly opposite, across the 
road, dark and moist from the rain of the night before. 
There were so many elm trees in front of the house I was 
in, that the little pools of rain water, still standing in the 
road here and there, did not glisten and shine at all, 
although the sun was bright and quite high. The house 
itself stood far enough back to allow of a good square yard 
in front, and was raised from the street-level the height 
of a face-wall. Three or four steps led up to the front 
walk. On each side of the steps, growing near the edge of 
the wall, was an enormous lilac-tree in full blossom. I 
could see them tossing their purple clusters between the 
elm branches ; there was quite a wind blowing that morning. 
A hedge of lilacs, kept low by constant cropping, began 
atj/he blooming lilac-trees, and reached around the rest 
of the yard, at the top of the face-wall. The yard was 
gay with flowers, laid out in fantastic little beds, all 
bordered trimly with box. The house . . . had no 
beauty in itself, being boldly plain and glaring, like all 



ATMOSPHERE 211 

of its kind; but the green waving boughs of the elms and 
lilacs and the undulating shadows they cast toned it down 
and gave it an air of coolness and quiet and lovely reserve. 
I began to feel a sort of pleasant, idle curiosity concerning 
it . . . and after breakfast ... I took occasion 
to ask my hostess . . . who lived there. 

The student is urgently requested to study this passage 
minutely, comparing its turns with those of Daudet's. 
If he will do this, he will discover a most important struc- 
tural difference between the techniques of the two authors. 
Daudet describes by noting the effects of the described 
thing upon something or somebody else. Mrs. Freeman 
describes directly and then notes the cause of the described 
thing. Thus, she tells us what made the Munson house 
look dark and moist, instead of telling us how the darkness 
and moisture of it affected her or something or somebody 
in the story. She explains why the pools of rain-water 
did not glisten, but she does not tell how they impressed 
her or what change or quality they wrought in the scene. 
She sees the lilac-trees tossing their blossoms; but Daudet 
would have told you what the motion made him think 
about and feel, or perhaps described the odd little shadows 
it caused to flit pendulously across the sward. 

Now, it is just this difference which marks art off most 
sharply from science and other practical ways of thinking 
and doing. The scientist and sometimes the business man 
are concerned seriously with causes and reasons; for, 
knowing these, they are enabled to control the effects and 
thus to manage the world according to their liking. But 
the artist does not care to dominate finance or shape poli- 
tics or explain the ultimate nature of carbon and bacteria; 
he aims only to depict various human affairs, especially 
the natural problems of life and human nature's way of 
coping with them. For his purposes, therefore, events 
and objects exhibit themselves with clearest contour in 



212 SHORT STORY WRITING 

their influence upon man and man's natural environment. 
For it is this very influence, and it alone, which makes them 
factors in life's drama. To narrate causes, while develop- 
ing the setting of a story, is to forget the very nature and 
ideals of art itself; it is to become, for the nonce, practical 
or scientific or, perhaps, merely garrulous. 

Much less offensive, of course, is flat, unexplaining de- 
scription of details, such as one encounters all too fre- 
quently in the pages of most American local-color artists, 
whose technique is generally no less stiff than their paro- 
chial ideas. To call a spade a spade, a black horse a 
black horse, and so on, is a sin of omission only. It does 
not name causes, it merely fails to name effects. It is 
therefore a neutral method; at times serving admirably 
but generally so weak that it is more to be pitied than 
censured. 

The reader is particularly warned against misconstruing 
the above. He must not think that I am there condemn- 
ing the supposed virtue of simplicity. To rate low the 
description that does not characterize effects is by no 
means the same as to say that the parables of the Bible, 
for instance, are ill written because they do not character- 
ize. It is true, their descriptive passages will be searched 
for in vain, while their occasional descriptive words are 
as bald as mountain granite. But this is precisely as it 
should be; for the parables, as we have said elsewhere, are 
not short stories at all, but fables like iEsop's (though less 
ingenious than the latter), and they are not fables with 
atmosphere. Nor could they have been such, without 
complete surrender of their purpose. Their aim was, of 
course, to bring home to some barbarians certain pro- 
found moral and religious themes. Now, the emotional 
quality of the latter is utterly alien to that of landscapes, 
town sights, architecture, furniture, weather, and all the 
other elements which figure in the setting of narrative 



ATMOSPHERE 213 

and whose effects constitute atmosphere. How futile it 
would have been, then, to have essayed intensifying the 
idea in, say, the parable of the prodigal son by descanting 
upon the calm and comfort of his old homestead or upon 
the filth of the courtyards where he devoured husks in 
the last days of folly! Doubtless such word-painting 
would have a power all its own — but this very excel- 
lence would have here become a vice, for it would have 
muffled the still, small voice of the sermon. One might 
as well try to accentuate the richness of human song with 
an accompaniment of thunder-claps and surf tumult. 
Wherever atmosphere distorts or obscures the single 
effect, description should be as flavorless and as unsugges- 
tive as possible. It should vanish behind the story, even 
as it does in all great thematic narratives turning around 
ethical and religious ideas. But all such stories, be it 
repeated, are not stories with atmosphere, either [by 
right or in fact. Hence what we have been saying about 
the handling of description does not apply to them. 

b. Atmosphere is integrated intensively by letting the 
action of characters in the story be directed toward or other- 
wise involve such elements of the setting as are intimately 
connected with the tone of the latter. We saw, a moment 
ago, that one way of securing effective atmosphere is to 
characterize its effect. We have now to ask the more 
special question: which effect, if any, lends itself best to 
such characterizing? Broadly speaking, the answer runs 
thus: the best effect is the one to which the people of the 
story respond in a manner that affects the course of the 
story somehow. For such an effect is most closely woven 
into the texture of the plot itself. 

Good literature abounds with instances of this, but there 
is none superior to Markheim. A great technician in 
every fictional problem, Stevenson was at his best in 
integrating atmosphere. Where can you find anything 



214 SHORT STORY WRITING 

more finely wrought than the events ensuing upon Mark- 
heim's murder of the dealer? 

The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and 
then another, with every variety of pace and voice — one 
deep as the bell from a cathedral turret, another ringing 
on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz — the clocks began 
to strike the hour of three in the afternoon. 

The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb 
chamber staggered him. He began to bestir himself, 
going to and fro with the candle, beleaguered by moving 
shadows, and startled to the soul by chance reflections. 
In many rich mirrors, some of home design, some from 
Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and 
repeated, as if it were an army of spies ; his own eyes met 
and detected him ; and the sound of his own steps, lightly 
as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And still, as he 
continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him with a 
sickening iteration, of the thousand faults of his design. . . . 

Observe that Stevenson has chosen those very objects 
and sights and sounds which most naturally might play 
into just this dramatic situation. Clocks whose striking 
impresses the murderer as though they were alarums 
sounding his crime abroad and summoning the inhabit- 
ants of the earth to his pursuit. Mirrors which fling 
back into his face that very face itself, but so shadowed 
and shrunken in perspective and so fleeting that its 
innumerable manifestations impress him as an army of 
spies, and send him off into a cold panic. These dis- 
turbers of his fancied seclusion prey upon his mind, stir 
up fears that otherwise would have slumbered innocuously, 
and finally drive him into a turmoil of conscience and 
sophistry which precipitates the crucial situation. Here 
we find the ideal handling; the setting is much more than 
the place where things happen, it plays a part in the march 
of events, even as the dominant character does. It 
makes him think, it harasses him, it helps lead him to 
confession. 



ATMOSPHERE 215 

c. Those elements of the setting figure most effectively in 
the action which enter into the latter most frequently, rather 
than most decisively. This rule must be carefully con- 
strued. It is a generalization which story factors some- 
times restrict and obscure. The theme, for instance, may 
include the thought that one little sight or sound turns 
a man from an evil course; and then, of course, this one 
little sight or sound must be played up tremendously at 
the dramatic instant. But usually stories do not demand 
such manipulation, for their settings only reinforce some 
emotional quality that runs through their entire actions. 
In all such cases, the writer's task is identical with that 
of the musical composer, who, starting with a certain 
simple combination of notes (his theme), endeavors to 
sustain, evenly yet without monotony, their unique melody 
and feeling values throughout the whole composition. 
Now, it is a matter of easy observation that a series of 
relatively slight impressions harmoniously related pro- 
duces an intenser mood in us than the same impressions 
when condensed into one or two terrific instants of appre- 
ciation. Thus, a symphony one hour long brings to life 
more throbbingly its theme than the most exquisite two 
or three bars of music could. And, in a story, the most 
magnificent picture of the setting crowded, let us say, 
into the opening paragraph, will heighten the single effect 
much less potently than a hundred little significant 
glimpses of tree, sky, and brook scattered loosely up and 
down the whole narrative. 

A host of young writers seem unaware of this elementary 
psychological fact. They cram all their landscapes into 
the opening event and leave the body of the story as bare 
of pictures as a ledger. The result is twice disastrous. 
In the first place, the setting has scarcely time, in the 
opening event, to integrate closely with the other factors 
of the story; so there it sits, like a dainty bonnet on the 



216 SHORT STORY WRITING 

head of an ill-favored woman, all too painfully not of a 
piece with her. In the second place, such a story, moving 
from fine scenery to none at all, is almost certain to pro- 
duce a declining effect — at least slightly. This danger, 
to be sure, diminishes as the dramatic intensity of the 
complication and character drawing waxes. Yet it is 
ever present. 

d. If possible, depict the setting from the point of view of 
the dominant character. Should some complication make 
this awkward, choose the point of view of some other char- 
acter. If this, too, is impossible, employ that of a non-par- 
ticipating narrator. Only as a last resort, depict atmosphere 
objectively. (By point of view we here mean, of course, the 
angle of narration.) The reasons for this rule have 
already been set forth in our discussion of the angle of 
narration. 1 

J Cf. 175 etc. 



EXERCISES 217 



Exercises 

1. Analyze minutely the manner in which the settings 
of the following stories have been integrated so as to 
produce atmosphere. State precisely which of the above 
rules have been adhered to and which have not. Can 
you suggest better manipulation anywhere? 

Haines, Donald Hamilton — Who Only Stand and Wait. 
(Everybody's, Oct., 1910.) 

Stringer, Arthur — The Man Who Made Good. (Every- 
body's, Dec, 1910.) 
Oppenheim, Jas. — Slag. (Everybody's, June, 1911.) 
Hibbard, Geo. — The Skyscraper. (Scribner's, Jan., 1911.) 
Dreiser, Theodore — The Mighty Burke. (McClure's, 
May, 1911.) 

Post, Melville D. — The House of the Dead Man. (Satur- 
day Ev. Post, Sept. 30, 1911.) 

2. Take the characters and the complication of some 
one of the following stories, discover the single effect, 
and then alter the author's treatment of the setting so as 
to make it intensify that effect better than it now does. 

Krog, Fritz — Die Wanderlust. (McClure's, Aug., 1911.) 

Gerould, Katherine F. — The Wine of Violence. (Scrib- 
ner's, July, 1911.) 

Humphreys, Mary Gay — For East is East, and West is 
West.' (Scribner's, Oct., 1911.) 

Singmaster, Elsie — The Rebellion of Wilhelmina. (Cen- 
tury, Sept., 1911.) 

3. Here is a list of settings. Designate with great care 
the emotional qualities of each one with which you are at 
all familiar; and, if any stories suggest themselves to you 
which those qualities intensify, sketch the plots. 



218 SHORT STORY WRITING 

Times Square, Manhattan, at seven o'clock Sunday 
morning. 

An abandoned church in the Berkshire hills. 

Noon hour in a knitting mill. 

An old-fashioned New England parlor. 

Threshing day on an Iowa farm. 

A clear winter day in the Canadian woods. 

The council chamber of some American city, during a 
session of aldermen. 

A camp meeting in the back counties. 

A sailors' supply store in an American seaport. 

A village drug store. 

Around a baseball bulletin before a newspaper office. 

4. In each of the following adages is the germ of a 
hundred tales. Choose the one that appeals most strongly 
to you and write a thematic story around it, working as 
below prescribed: 

What's worth doing at all is worth doing well. 

A stitch in time saves nine. 

Half a loaf is better than no loaf at all. 

Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of 
themselves. 

God helps them that help themselves. 

A small leak will sink a big ship. 

It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright. 

Having chosen your adage and the theme which your 
story is to exemplify, proceed as follows : 

1. Write your theme (or story germ) in a few declara- 
tive sentences. 

2. Pick out each phase of the idea and represent it by a 
person (or by many persons) acting. For instance, if 
your theme is: 'A weak, cowardly man is more terrible 
than a brave one in a desperate situation,' depict a weak 
man, a brave man, and a desperate situation in which the 



EXERCISES 219 

coward does something more courageous or more fool- 
hardy than the brave man would do. Then find an 
incident exhibiting the coward as a coward, and another 
revealing the courage of the brave man. 

3. Write a brief narrative account of such situations, 
paying no attention to anything save clarity. If possible, 
keep the natural order of events. 

4. Test the consistency and lifelikeness of the resulting 
rough story by thinking through all the episodes from 
the point of view of each character involved in them. 

5. Eliminate scenes and character delineation that are 
not strictly necessary to convey the story. Whenever 
possible, make one episode develop two or three essential 
ideas. 

6. Test the order of events. If they do not move with 
even or rising effectiveness, recast them so that they do. 
This may be done either by giving them a new order or 
else by intensifying. 

7. Fix upon the dominant emotional tone of the story 
as a whole. With this clearly in mind, re-write from start 
to finish, echoing the tone whenever possible. Begin 
this not less than a week after the preceding task has been 
finished. 

Warning. Do not suppose that this is the model way 
of writing stories. After you have found yourself, you 
may go at the work in any of a dozen other manners. 
But this exercise, though artificial and difficult, is valuable 
because it sharpens the fundamental issues of technique. 

5. Pick out from the following abridged fairy tale the 
theme, the complication, the characters, and the action. 
Having done so, write a 1,000- word story outline preserv- 
ing the idea and the typical line of action and the outcome 
of the original, but substituting human beings for the 
characters. 



220 SHORT STORY WRITING 

Next alter your version so that it will become a genuine 
short story, and then finish it as such. 

There were once a mouse, a bird, and a sausage, who 
formed a partnership. 

They had set up housekeeping, and had lived for a 
long time in great harmony together. The duty of the 
bird was to fly every day into the forests and bring home 
wood; the mouse had to draw water, to light the fire, and 
lay the table-cloth; and the sausage was cook. 

It happened one day that the bird had met in his road 
another bird, to which he had boasted of their happiness 
and friendship at home. 

The other bird replied scornfully, "What a poor little 
simpleton you are to work in the way you do, while the 
other two are enjoying themselves at home!" When the 
mouse has lighted the fire and drawn the water she can 
go and rest in her little room till she is called to lay the 
cloth. The sausage can sit by the stove while he watches 
that the dinner is well cooked, and when the dinner time 
arrives he devours four times as much as the others of 
broth or vegetables till he quite shines with salt and fat." 

The bird, after listening to this, came home quite dis- 
contented, and, laying down his load, seated himself at 
the table and ate so much and filled his crop so full that 
he slept next morning without waking, and thought this 
was a happy life. 

The next day the little bird objected to go and fetch 
wood, saying that he had been their servant long enough, 
and that he had been a fool to work for them in this way. 
He intended at once to make a change and seek his living 
in another way. 

After this, although the mouse and the sausage were 
both in a rage, the bird was master, and would have his 
own way. So he proposed that they should draw lots, 
and the lots fell so that the sausage was to fetch the wood, 
the mouse to be cook, and the bird to draw the water. 
Now what was the consequence of all this? The sausage 
went out to get wood, the bird lighted the fire, and the 
mouse put on the saucepan and sat down to watch it till 
the sausage returned home with the wood for the next 
day. But he stayed away so long that the bird, who 



EXERCISES 221 

wanted a breath of fresh air, went out to look for him. 
On his way he met a dog, who told him that, having 
met the sausage, he had devoured him. 

The bird complained greatly against the dog for his 
conduct, and called him a cruel robber, but it did no 
good. 

The little bird, full of sorrow, flew home carrying the 
wood with him and related to the mouse what he had 
seen. They were both very grieved, but quickly agreed 
that the best thing for them to do was to remain together. 

From that time the bird undertook to prepare the table, 
and the mouse to roast something for supper, and to put 
the vegetables into the saucepan, as she had seen the 
sausage do; but before she had half finished her task, 
the fire burned her so terribly that she fell down and died. 

When the little bird came home, there was no cook to 
be seen, and the fire was nearly out. The bird, in alarm, 
threw the wood here and there, cried out, and searched 
everywhere, but no cook could be found. 

Meanwhile a spark from the fire fell on the wood and 
set it in a blaze, so that there was danger of the house 
being burned. The bird ran in haste to the well for 
water. Unfortunately, he let the pail fall into the well, 
and, being dragged after it, he sank into the water and 
was drowned. 

6. Each of the following stories typifies its author's tech- 
nique. To acquire intimacy with the latter, carry out 
the following program faithfully. On it the average 
student ought to spend not less than 400 hours. 

1. Transcribe each story three times. 

2. Reproduce it from memory three times, as best you 
can, never looking back to the original for aid. These 
trials should not be made on successive days, but at longer 
intervals. 

3. Invent a new setting for the plot and write a story, 
adhering as closely as possible to the style of the original. 
Repeat this at least three times. For variety, choose a 
fresh setting at each practice. 

4. Invent a plot considerably different from the original. 



222 SHORT STORY WRITING 

and write your story in the model style. Repeat this at 
least five times. (Note. For ordinary class work this 
exercise must be greatly shortened. In this case it is 
advisable to concentrate on one author's style. By all 
means avoid a little experimenting with several authors. 
This is worthless and confusing.) 

The stories to be experimented with are: 

1. Poe — The Cask of Amontillado. 

2. Maupassant — The Necklace. 

3. Stevenson — The Sire de MaletroiVs Door. (In New 
Arabian Nights.) 

4. Wharton — His Father's Son. (In Tales of Ghosts and 
Men.) 

5. 0. Henry— The Gift of the Magi. (In The Four 
Million.) 

7. The following is an underdeveloped story. Discover 
its theme (or other single effect). Then estimate which 
dramatic factor of the plot is weakest. Suggest improve- 
ments in it. Next criticize the angle of narration and, if 
possible, improve it. Finally rewrite the story in not less 
than 3,500 words. 

Five hundred, — one thousand, — three thousand dollars 
for the head of Sarafan! He sank upon his doorstep, the 
paper slipping from his hand. Motionless, yearning, he 
looked to the west, — always to the west, — and over their 
beer they would say: — 

"Old Hamlin, he waits for his boy. " 

In just such a twilight he had pleaded for her love, — 
and when the moon was high, she promised. 

All the long May day they danced at their betrothal, 
and when the evening came, she had danced into the heart 
of Pierre, a rough but dashing soldier. The wise heads 
nodded :— 

"He is handsome". 

The young heads whispered: — 

"She looks not unkindly on the stranger". 

Hamlin said nothing. 



EXERCISES 223 

One evening at parting, he held her hand longer than 
usual: — 

"It is Pierre you love", — and she answered:— 

"Yes\ 

That night young Hamlin, listless, stolid, laid upon 
the parson's table a few thumb-worn bills : — 

"There will be no wedding". 

In the morning, Pierre had gone and with him Hamlin's 
love. 

The years that followed brought no word from Ham- 
lin's love, neither did he make an effort to hear from her. 
Sometimes in the hushed voices as he passed, he could 
catch rumors of wretched poverty, of a brutal husband, 
and once it seemed to him that they spoke of her as a 
widow. Hamlin dreamed strange dreams. 

She was coming back, — always coming back. Some- 
times he trembled at her footstep. Sometimes his tired 
eyes drew her from the darkness. But always when the 
moon was high, he strained her to his aching heart. 

Returning one evening, he found upon his doorstep a 
huddled mass of rags, half buried in snow, and beside it a 
whimpering child. Filled with apprehension, he turned 
the body. It was she. 

He stared stupidly at the unconscious face. Suddenly 
he seized her wrist and felt her pulse. Frightened, he tore 
away her shawl and laid his ear above her heart. He rose 
reassured, and carried her into the house, the little one 
toddling at his heels. 

Beside the hearth, he piled up for her a bed. He 
gathered the rough twigs and built her a fire. 

For three miles he waded through the snow to bring 
back with him the village doctor. With the devotion of 
an ill-used cur, he watched beside her, and when the moon 
was high, she closed her sightless eyes. 

Three days after there was the funeral, a trustee of the 
orphanage came to relieve him of the child. Hamlin 
kept the boy. 

From this day, the tavern saw him no more. All day 
he toiled in the fields. His nights he spent at home, 
mending shoes. 

When some father's heart would overflow with pride 
in his son, Hamlin said nothing. He looked at the 



224 SHORT STORY WRITING 

towsled head of his boy, and in his eyes there glowed a 
far-off vision. 

As soon as the boy could understand, Hamlin would 
take out for him the silver hoard that grew so slowly. 
He would tell him of the wonderful schools in town, of 
the learning and honors that would be his. Every morn- 
ing he drove him five miles to town that he might have a 
better schooling than the humble village could afford, and 
when, showered with honors, he entered the university, 
old Hamlin sat at home worn, triumphant, counting the 
last dollar that was needed to complete his dream 

As he passed through the village, he could catch again 
the hushed whispers. This time they were speaking of 
the boy and well they might speak. If only — Ah well, 
perhaps it was a fancy. Yet Hamlin felt that in his boy 
there was growing more and more powerful the lawless 
spirit of his father. Twice he had been caught in some 
wild escapade, and was spared only because of his brilliant 
scholarship. 

Time and again he wrote for the money that Hamlin 
sent him with a trembling hand, — the money he needed 
for his studies — the money that found its way into some 
pit of hell. 

For months at a time he would absent himself from his 
studies. 

In his supposed senior year he came home one night to 
stay. Nervously Hamlin questioned him. No, he had 
met no one in the village. 

Hamlin beseeched him to return. He argued, pleaded, 
threatened. He learned the whole crushing truth. They 
quarreled. The lad disappeared and with him the last 
of the silver hoard. 

Hamlin laid his snowy head on the empty box. 

"His father's blood, — only his father's blood". 

Still looking to the west, — always to the west where his 
boy had gone, — Hamlin was startled from his dreaming. 
Some one was stumbling up the garden path. Someone 
fell upon him with a sob. ' His boy'. 

Wild-eyed he pointed to the west. 

" There, — there! They're coming for me" 

"For you"? 

"I am Sarafan". 



EXERCISES 225 

Hamlin was motionless. "Who knows that Hamlin's 
son is Sarafan"? 

"Only you". 

His hands closed upon the lad's throat. He dragged 
him down into the cellar. They struggled fiercely. Ham- 
lin was the stronger. He held him down until he breathed 
no more and then, smiling, he went out to meet the pur- 
suers. 

That night when the moon was high he dug the grave 
in a lonely thicket, and there he laid 'His Boy*. 



PART II: 
THE BUSINESS OF THE SHORT STORY 



THE BUSINESS OF THE SHORT STORY 

Grown the heads of better men 

With lilies and with morning glories! 
I'm unworthy of a pen — 

These are Bread-and-Butter stories. 
Shall I tell you how I know? 
Strangers wrote and told me so. 

He who only toils for fame 
I pronounce a silly Billy. 
/ can't dine upon a name, 
Or look dressy in a lily. 
And — Oh shameful truth to utter! — 
I won't live on bread and butter. 

Gouverneur Morris. Dedication of It. 

The so-called practical advice purveyed to persons who 
wish to make money at fiction writing' reduces pretty 
much to a few cynical propositions about Mammon, 
prejudiced editors, catering to the mob, and the ignominy 
of being an unknown writer. And when it does not, it 
swings to the other extreme, as in the case of 0. Henry's 
recipe of success: "Write what pleases you. There is no 
second rule." Now, both these views are absurd. The 
affair is not so simple; neither is it so desperate nor so 
bright. It resembles every other business in that it 
depends upon many independent circumstances; over 
many of these the individual author has absolutely no 
control, and many others editors are powerless to direct. 
Reduced to its simplest terms, it is a 'problem of three 
bodies': (a) the reading public, (b) the author, and (c) 
the publisher. From this triad there is no escape, unless 

229 



230 SHORT STORY WRITING 

the writer chooses to emulate the minstrels of old, wander- 
ing from house to house, reciting his wares, and gleaning 
dimes from the pleased and kicks from the wroth. The 
contemporary variation of this scheme is publishing at 
one's own expense; but this is generally less successful 
than out-and-out minstrelsy, for the volumes have to be 
given away to friends and creditors. 

Probably, there are not over ten men in the world who 
analyze this 'problem of three bodies' with approximate 
completeness and accuracy; and these men are the 
shrewd veterans of the great publishing houses. It can 
be outlined here, though, with sufficient detail to assist 
the average story writer a little. I shall not explain the 
why and wherefore of all the following assertions. Some 
of them I do not understand, and others depend upon very 
complex, lengthy and difficult factors of social psychology, 
while still others are too obvious. 

1. There is not one reading public, but many. This 
fact is one of the self-evident, but many a young writer 
(and many another) ignores it and pays dearly for the 
oversight. Yet the most casual inspection of magazines 
indicates it, and a ten-minute study of the U. S. Census 
demonstrates it. There are some ninety and odd million 
people within our borders. Of this multitude, nearly 
seven out of every ten live on farms or in small villages. 
Hundreds of thousands of these know only their fields 
and the hamlet church and the Saturday night gossip 
around the crossroads. Another hundred thousand or 
two are shrewd, prosperous Americans of the older type; 
they have been through high school, and perhaps through 
the State college; they read the President's Message and 
The Country Gentleman, they study the World Almanac 
winter evenings, and after bumper crops they send their 
families to Europe, while they stay home and loan money 
to river-bottom farmers at fifteen per cent. Then there 






THE BUSINESS OF THE SHORT STORY 231 

is the Progressive Villager, one of the most characteristic 
American types, who, from his elm-shadowed cottage, 
judges the world cannily with the assistance of the Cir- 
culating Library and the magazines. More than any 
other single class, he has shaped American culture; and, 
though his influence is swiftly waning, it still is a power 
in the land. Now, we might go on naming intellectual 
types, working from the back counties toward the East 
Side of Manhattan. And we should find hundreds of 
species, ranging from housewife to chorus girl, from old- 
school Methodist to Italian atheist, from neurasthenic 
bank clerk to professional safe-blower, from the new 
Puritan of Southern California to the anarchist who night- 
ly bawls his creed in the beery basements of East Broad- 
way. Some of these classes live three thousand miles 
apart, as far as Paris is removed from Timbuctoo; and 
the intellectual gulf between Paris and Timbuctoo is no 
greater than that which intervenes between such Ameri- 
cans. 

That all these people are interested in very different 
affairs, is self-evident. That people read what they are 
interested in, is also axiomatic. Therefore, there are 
many reading publics. And this conclusion is richly con- 
firmed by each month's output of literature and news- 
papers. There is one public for the New York Call, and 
another for the New York Times, and a third for the New 
York Journal. Mrs. Wharton counts her adherents by 
the thousand, and Robert W. Chambers reckons his by 
the ten thousand, while Laura Jean Libbey scores her 
multitudes in numbers of six figures. Outside of all 
these hordes many millions live serenely indifferent to 
metropolitan journals and the Best Sellers and the muck- 
rakers. What they peruse is pretty much of a mystery 
except to the sales departments of the large publishing 
houses; but that they do read, and that they have peculiar 



232 SHORT STORY WRITING 

and very decided tastes, is well known to the book 
trade. An interesting morsel of testimony on this 
matter is offered in a valuable anonymous book, en- 
titled A Publisher's Confession. 1 The writer, who is 
the head of one of our most prominent publishing 
houses, says : 

But stranger than the popularity of very popular novels, 
or than the utter failure of merely 'literary' novels, is the 
moderate success of a certain kind of commonplace 
stories. I know a woman of domestic tastes who every 
two years turns off a quiet story. She has now written a 
dozen or more. They are never advertised. . . The 
'literary' world pays no heed to her. Her books are not 
even reviewed in the best journals. They lack distinction. 
But every one is sure to sell from ten to fifteen thousand 
copies. No amount of advertising, no amount of noise 
could increase the number of readers to twenty-five thou- 
sand; and there is no way to prevent a sale of from ten to 
fifteen thousand copies. Why this is so is one of the most 
baffling problems of psychology. 

I must confess that I find nothing baffling in the fixity 
of such a clientele. There is a definite number of people 
who like red cravats with small black polka dots. There 
is a definite multitude which enjoys slow music in D 
minor best. There is a public that dotes on cantaloupe 
with pepper and salt, and another which revels in canta- 
loupe sugared. But what is there strange in this? Take 
any imaginable thing on earth, offer it to any human 
being, and he must either like it, dislike it, or be indifferent 
toward it. With only three possible ways of behaving, 
it is therefore a simple matter of arithmetic to show that, 
in a group of, say, forty million adults, there will be a 
pretty definite number liking any given object. And this 
number will remain nearly constant throughout the life- 
time of the group, ^because adult tastes and appe- 

JDoubleday, Page, 1905. 



THE BUSINESS OF THE SHORT STORY 233 

tites change very slowly. Thus, in each generation 
there will always be a vast number of different read- 
ing publics; and the writer who pleases one of them 
once can probably repeat the trick for a number of 
years. 

2. The novel may successfully appeal to a single reading 
public; the short story must appeal to many. Please 
notice the wording of this statement carefully. It is 
not asserted that a novel should appeal to only one class, 
nor yet that a story which does this is devoid of genuine 
merit. The greatest novels certainly please scores of 
classes, while some unmarketable stories — for instance, 
the racier French sort — are excellent in every respect save 
the commercial. (I am, of course, speaking only u of 
American commercial conditions.) What I do assert, 
though, is that the novelist may prosper, may carry 
his message or impart his fun to a very sharply de- 
fined group of readers; but this is almost impossible 
for a story writer except insofar as he has previously 
won his group of readers by writing novels. Why 
is this? The origin of the modern magazine ex- 
plains it. 

3. The magazine is supported chiefly by its advertising 
pages. The value of these pages depends upon the num- 
ber of readers who are potential buyers of the advertised 
commodities. Hence the most successful magazine is the 
one which pleases some very large class, or, as is usually 
the case, many classes. Now, the short story writer 
who is not a novelist of repute is almost wholly de- 
pendent upon the magazine for his current sales. He 
cannot publish his tales in book form unless most of them 
have appeared in periodicals and won applause there. 
Twenty years ago and before, when the editing of a 
magazine was more an art and a profession than a busi- 
ness, things were quite different. An editor could then 



234 SHORT STORY WRITING 

print what he liked and trust in the existence of a few 
thousand like-minded readers who would buy. All his 
competitors were doing the same thing; and so they 
were not competitors at all, in the modern, sanguinary 
sense. Furthermore, all periodicals of those days were 
high-priced and catered to the upper classes; if not to the 
rich, at least to the cultured. And these readers did not 
scrimp in matters literary; they bought all magazines that 
interested them, just as people of the same stamp do 
today. How different with the business-ruled magazine 
of the twentieth century! Not content to reach the 
easy chair of him who of old pored over LittelVs Living 
Age and the Atlantic Monthly, it fights its way to the 
table of the man who can afford only one magazine a 
month; to the office of the 'Tired Business Man' and the 
weary housewife's kitchen; to the seat of the commercial 
traveler on a dull journey. The result of this tremendous 
expansion of circulation may be read off by the most inex- 
perienced observer. The popular magazine shuns every 
topic which deviates much from[the tastes of the supposed 
majority of the class or classes to which it appeals. (I 
emphasize the participle, please note!) And this means 
that, as Mr. H. G. Wells recently phrased it, "the editor 
of the magazine that strives to please a million families has 
to deaden down the conception of what a short story might 
be to the imaginative limitation of the common reader." 1 
All material which can be appreciated only by one who 
has been to Europe, or has studied chemistry, or has 
perused the vital statistics of the Mississippi Valley, or 

1 In the introduction to his collection of short stories entitled 
The Country of the Blind (Nelson, 1912). The entire diatribe is 
well worth reading, n spite of some fanciful theories in it (from which 
Wells is temperamentally unable to abstain). It gives a fairly 
accurate picture of the plight of story writers in Great Britain 
today and voices a wholesome protest against the absurd formalism 
which sways many critics, readers and editors. 






THE BUSINESS OF THE SHORT STORY 235 

has been sentenced to the gallows, or has compared the 
texts of Macbeth, or has analyzed the tariff schedule, or 
has experienced any other thing which the average man 
has not, — all such material is forbidden to the writer of 
tales. Furthermore, all material which can be appreciated 
only by a person of exceptional mental powers, or with an 
extraordinary sense of humor, or with prodigious subtlety 
is even more strictly taboo. And the reason for the prohi- 
bition is always the same. It is not because the topics 
which exceptional people understand are intricate or 
audacious or radical or improper; it is simply because the 
largest reading public does not grasp them with the sym- 
pathy of insight. 

4. Because of this, three types of short stories are 
unsuited to the average magazine: satire, allegory, and 
the 'fate drama'. They are but rarely accepted and 
then for some special reason which does not impair our 
general rule. Satire is either incomprehensible or weak 
to many intelligent people. Its appreciation demands 
an alertness of imagination considerably above the 
average. Occasionally a newspaper of the cultured 
classes, like The New York Evening Post or The Boston 
Transcript, cannot resist the temptation to wax ironical 
over some topic of the hour; and the result is ever the 
same; a sackful of protesting letters pours in from indig- 
nant subscribers who have taken the editorial words at 
face value. Now, it is just this element of irony in all 
spicy satire that militates against the latter. To make 
satire first-class, you must flavor it strongly with irony; 
but if you do, then you narrow your audience, ad- 
mitting only those who are so familiar with the object 
of your attack that they can read it off through the ironic 
veil of double meanings. 

As for the unpopularity of allegory, its difficulty is, at 
bottom, that of satire. Allegory, too, is saying one thing 



236 SHORT STORY WRITING 

and meaning another. And genuine intellectual skill 
is all too frequently required in the perceiving and en- 
joying of its twin significances. At best, allegory is not 
easy reading for the average man; and when it is fashioned 
in profound cogitation, it is little more than a riddle. 
I venture to say that not more than one magazine reader 
in four could understand all of the allegory in van Dyke's 
Half-Told Tales, which Scribner's had the courage to 
publish for its select clientele. And this casts no reflec- 
tion upon reader or author. The former may be very 
intelligent in his own way and well educated, too, 
and yet lack that peculiar nimbleness which allegory 
calls for. To lack it is no more disgraceful than to 
lack the power of following the texture of a Bach 
fugue. It is as much an endowment as the color of 
one's eyes. 

As for the l fate drama', the term itself requires defini- 
tion. I refer to the opposite of the 'uplift story', 
after which so many editors are sighing. It is the story 
which depicts man as the victim of circumstance or 
— what is really the same thing — as the victim of some 
uncontrollable trait in himself. Maupassant's The Piece 
of String, perfect though it is as a fulfilment of its own 
artistic purpose, presents such a picture, — Maitre Hauche- 
corne killed by his own exceeding thrift, by his pride, 
and by the mere chance of being observed picking up 
something; hence the story would probably have been 
rejected by most American magazines, though not by all. 
And why? Simply because it is not pleasant reading. 
Most men and women are a little depressed by the thought 
that they are not the captains of their souls; and they do 
not wish to pay fifteen cents, still less thirty-five, for the 
depression. They get more than enough of it gratis, 
every day. They read fiction, especially magazine fiction, 



THE BUSINESS OF THE SHORT STORY 237 

either for pure pleasure or else for agreeable informal 
instruction. 

Here is a fate drama which illustrates all the unpopular 
features of its species. A student's story, written with 
excellent style and technique, has to do with the effect 
which the religious services in a great cathedral exert 
upon a glass worker who is engaged in repairing some of 
the windows. The glass worker is a rabid atheist, bent 
upon converting everybody to his own views. The action 
begins with a scene in which he is mocking the religious 
mummery which he has just been witnessing, and proving 
that those who respect this are fools. Soon after, his 
little boy is injured by an automobile. A clergyman 
comes to console him and the glazier turns him away with 
wrath. The boy dies, and "at the funeral, out of the dark- 
ness and bitterness of his heart, Joe spoke his hopelessness 
to the little group of mourners gathered in his parlor." 
Back to his work in the cathedral he goes, still reviling 
the chanting priests far below his scaffold and sneering 
at the superstitious old women who go through the motions 
of worship. 

As the days passed, working at his solitary task, he 
began to get a certain companionship from the regular 
recurrence of the services. The solemn peal of the organ 
and the measured cadence of the incantations, even the 
hushed restlessness of the changing congregations, com- 
bined to soothe his wounded spirit which was sore op- 
pressed in those days while little Bub's death was so new. 
Once he caught himself envying those hundreds of people 
whose faith could pass beyond the barriers of the grave. 
For that he took himself to task. Too well he knew they 
were hypocrites. 

But as the days went by he shook off less easily the 
awesome effects of the services. The music began to 
exert its hypnotic influence. More and more, a sense of 
the great reality on whom he might call pressed upon him. 



238 SHORT STORY WRITING 

"Play ball"! he impatiently exclaimed aloud, "you're 
measuring that vault. That's what you are doing". 

For a moment he had thought himself part of that wor- 
shipful assemblage, standing with bowed head above. 
By a strong effort of will he tried to bend his mind to the 
minutiae of his task, but like a mighty flood the irresist- 
ible influence of the place surged upon him. His spirit 
was awed with a sense of invisible power and sublimity. 
He felt the actual presence of the spirit of the Almighty. 
The sound of the chanting ceased, and the priest's voice 
was raised in supplication. Moved by an irresistible 
impulse, Joe Barry sank to his knees, his lips moving in 
prayer. 

Some editors would reject this story simply because it 
deals with a religious theme, which is now-a-days con- 
sidered not only bad taste but also bad policy. The more 
serious objection to it, however, is not the theme but the 
moral, which is that the religious influence is hypnotism 
by sights and sounds and ancient mummeries, and that 
they are strong enough to vanquish a man's deepest con- 
victions. The reader does not have to be an unbeliever 
in order to feel the depressing effects of this moral. 
Whether Joe Barry's philosophy was true or false, cer- 
tainly it was sincere; and what is more discouraging than 
to see a genuine persuasion defeated by mere music and 
incense and fancies? 

5. This last fact is one on which we must dwell at once, 
so persistently is it ignored or underestimated or — worse 
yet — misconstrued. Authors who have not yet caught 
their bearings are wont to berate now the editor and 
now the public for a singular perverse unwillingness to 
take ' serious stories'. By a 'serious story' they mean 
the 'fate drama', which, by the way, is much loved and 
attempted by beginners. They declare, in their invective, 
that the editor and his public 'don't know real art when 
they see it'. Unfortunately, some excellent literary critics 



THE BUSINESS OF THE SHORT STORY 239 

and other authorities encourage this belief by sneering at 
the low grade of current short fiction. Now, such a ver- 
dict carries well in a class room of sophomores; also, it is a 
balm to the proprietors of rejected MSS. But it is 
founded upon a fatal misconception and upon false stand- 
ards. It is not merely perfectionism; it is bad arith- 
metic. The perfectionism consists in restricting the 
name of art to half a dozen masterpieces and condemning 
as 'mere journalism' everything inferior to They and 
A Covjard and Markheim. Not long ago I heard a pro- 
fessor of English Literature pour scorn upon a distant 
colleague who lectured to undergraduates on Mrs. 
Wharton, 0. Henry, and Jack London. There are, said 
the scorner, only six story writers in the world worthy of 
academic attention. Now, here we see perfectionism in 
its most preposterous hypertrophy. The average per- 
fectionist is a shade more liberal; and yet his error is 
great. In demanding that the monthly magazine accept 
only what measures up to the very best, he not only sets 
an impossible standard, but also misunderstands the 
function of magazines. This function is not the pub- 
lishing of masterpieces; it is the disseminating of in- 
structive, critical, and entertaining articles and fiction. 
People want such, and they want them much more than 
they want masterpieces. They want life and the affairs 
of life exhibited to them in many phases and moods and 
bearings; and these infinitely exceed art in their variety 
and quality of form and content. 

Art, in the perfectionist's meaning of the word, is only 
one of life's many pleasures and tonics. It is less impor- 
tant than food, less true than school-books, less influential 
than the weather, less progressive than chemistry, less 
moral than common sense^ less human than politics, 
and less refreshing than a dip in the surf. And it always 
will be, so long as people remain sane. Hence the artist 



240 SHORT STORY WRITING' 

may not arrogate to himself the right of telling people 
what they should read. People will read what they like 
to read; and, if healthy, they will be literary pluralists, — 
to borrow the speech of philosophy for a moment. One 
day Smith will hunger for Mark Twain, while Jones 
craves Bunyan. The next morning Smith digs into the 
history of Standard Oil, and Jones samples Landor with 
gusto. And thus appetite shifts to the year's end. 
Now you may call it fickleness or shallowness, if you 
choose; and you may extol the truly artistic reader who 
would be content to be cast away upon a desert island 
with nothing but Paradise Lost and Shakespeare. But the 
truth remains that real life, in all its vigor and contempt 
of rigid form, is a perpetual hunt after new things. Little 
does it care what it finds, if only the find be novel, agree- 
able, or instructive. It tastes, sucks the sweet, takes 
on strength from the day's kill, and moves on after 
quarries fresh and flavors strange. Perhaps this habit 
is but the subtlest form of the instinct of self-preser- 
vation; it may be the effort to get one's bearings toward 
all things and thus to learn how to cope with the latter. 
Be that as it may; the fact itself looms mountain-like, 
in the realm of books and papers no less than every- 
where else. And, whether he likes it or not, the story writer 
must reckon with a public that is forever demanding new 
manners and many of them, new tales and strange ways 
of telling them. It is a public which agrees whole- 
heartedly with Bacon that "there is no excellent beauty 
that hath not some strangeness in the proportion"; 
and it exceeds Bacon in its belief that strangeness, whether 
of form or of content, is the better half of art. 1 

1 These remarks seem to contradict the one made a moment ago, 
that people's tastes are fixed. But there is no conflict here. An 
adult's likes and dislikes are fixed pretty definitely with reference to 
each type of object artistic or otherwise. But this does not mean that 



THE BUSINESS OF THE SHORT STORY 241 

Here, then, is the editor's impregnable defense against 
those authors who curse him for shipping back to them 
their stories which are as swift as Maupassant's, as 
analytical as James', and as pyrotechnic as Poe's, and 
yet unacceptable. It is his defense against the critics 
who damn him for printing mere anecdotes, plotless 
character sketches, smartly shallow dialogues, clownish 
humor, and news items disguised as fiction. He may 
always say: " Indict me, but first indict life itself." 
And to that there is no answer. 

6. Another aspect of the 'serious story' must be con- 
sidered. People say that current fiction is shallow and 
empty of ideas; and so it falls short of being fine art, 
for fine art always gives us something to think about. 
Now, as a bald statement of contemporary fact, this is 
more true than false; but, as a criticism of the magazine 
short story, it is unsound. For, in the field of magazine 
literature, there are many specialized forms, each striving 
to convey a distinct type of information or effect; and 
the short story, which is one of these forms, specializes in 
entertaining, not in conveying ideas. Hence, it is only 
incidentally that a story with an idea is printed. This 
happens, not because authors cannot produce such fiction, 
but only because editors elect to separate fact from 
fiction more sharply than ever. 1 And the editors do this 

the man unswervingly pursues some one thmg which he happens to 
enjoy. It does not mean that his attention is directed forever to 
it and to nothing else. He may love his red cravat with black polka 
dots, but this does not prevent him from worshipping Maeterlinck. 
In other words, every person has a large number of tastes, each of 
which is directed toward its own peculiar material; and, while each 
taste may be changeless, the person may shift frequently from one to 
another. This is just what happens in everyday life, and most 
conspicuously in reading. 

x One apparent exception to this rule appears in the editorial 
policy of the Saturday Evening Post, which publishes many news 



242 SHORT STORY WRITING 

because the whole world is doing it. It is one minor 
feature of that specialization which is characteristic of 
twentieth century life. It is also a symptom of advancing 
intelligence. The artist faces the very same predicament 
which the physician, the manufacturer, the attorney, 
and the scientist confront. Like them, he can achieve 
most by attempting least; by concentrating upon some 
one theme, upon some single dramatic pattern, upon some 
set of characters, he can acquire a familiarity with their 
possible effects and an ease in producing these which will 
enable him to write more stories and better stories. This 
is the policy of most contemporary story writers. It is, 
however, the least profound aspect of literary specializa- 
tion. The more momentous one we discern in the con- 
spicuous tendency of these same writers to leave preaching 
to preachers, fine metaphor to the poets, statistics to the 
sociologist, and generally all matter-of-fact argument and 
all serious philosophizing to essayists. We observe it in 
their effort to entertain, to be dramatic, to romance 
freely. Nine out of every ten stories today have no 
message, for they are not messengers; they are enter- 
tainers. If you wish a message, go to the specialists in 
messages; go to the writers of serious articles. 

Were we indulging ourselves in a critique of the 
age, we might linger long over the question whether 
this extreme division of literary labor makes for the 
good in the long run. And we should come to the con- 
clusion that, while it greatly improves middle-grade 
fiction, it stifles the highest. The reasons for this view 
cannot be here presented, inasmuch as we are concerned 
with the commercial problem only. It will perhaps suffice 
to hint that the fundamental hindrance which corn- 
articles and essays on social problems in the form of stories. But 
in. its genuine fiction this periodical follows the modern custom 
quite strictly, serving up only entertainment pure and simple. 



THE BUSINESS OF THE SHORT STORY 243 

mercialized story writing raises is the rapidity of work and 
bulk of material required. Stories with messages, 
stories with big ideas cannot be ground out by recipe, 
nor yet in bulk. No amount of technical skill calls them 
into being; though of course when the idea comes, such 
proficiency enormously hastens its consummation. The 
big idea comes in its own season; to some persons often, to 
others but once in a lifetime, and to most of us never. 
Upon its arrival no man can reckon, and he who hopes to 
earn his bread by it hopes foolishly. The wish is contrary 
to human nature, and the career of almost every literary 
genius bears pathetic witness to the fact. Hawthorne, 
in his entire life, had possibly ten big ideas for stories. 
Poe had about the same number. Stevenson had not 
more than four (some critics might say only two). And 
most excellent authors of today have not come upon as 
many. All of which goes to prove that, in the business 
of story writing, the big idea is not worth figuring over. 
If it comes, it comes; and if it doesn't, it doesn't. As in 
every other commercial enterprise, so here; the worker 
gains most by raising the average quality and the gross 
quantity of his output 

This brings us to an observation which must have im- 
pressed everybody who has compared the magazines 
of today with those of twenty-five years ago. Specializa- 
tion and increased commercialization have not ap- 
preciably increased the number of top-notch stories, but 
they have enormously increased the multitude of good, 
well constructed, entertaining, psychologically true stories. 
Let the student consult the files of French, English, and 
American magazines of 1880 and earlier, and contrast 
them with current periodicals of the same type. He will 
discover story after story in the former which even 
Lippincott's and Ainslee's would now reject with loathing. 
The improvement is astounding. 



244 SHORT STORY WRITING 

7. On the side of technique, specialization is not new; 
certainly Poe and Maupassant concentrated narrowly and 
developed to the utmost the possibilities of a few story 
types. But on the side of story-telling, the intenser way 
of doing things in a product of recent years. It dates 
from the rise of the fifteen-cent magazines. An enter- 
taining article might be written on the business devices 
now employed by professional short story writers; the 
card catalogue, the ' follow-up system' whereby one story 
which has pleased a public is announced as the first of a 
series; the news clipping bureau, through which the 
specialist in high society stories receives raw material 
and the specialist in detective tales receives his matter, 
finished except in its dramatic form; and so on. But it 
is not important to instruct the learner in all these tricks 
of the trade. It is enough to disabuse him of the notion 
that he may achieve success by sitting at his midnight 
desk and thinking and writing as the spirit moves. 
True, some admirable fancies are thus coaxed into 
existence; but we are concerned here, not with the oc- 
casional happy idea but with the steady output, which 
alone makes story writing a profession and profitable. 
Nine stories out of every ten are suggested, in one manner 
or in another, by real episodes; and the variety of real 
episodes in any field or of any flavor is immeasurably 
richer than the range of any one man's fancy. These 
two indisputable facts set the first rule of specialization, 
which is this: Get in touch with some phase of life; become 
intimate with something that is going on in the world. 
They also shape the second rule, which is this: Study 
one and only one emotional quality of your chosen phase of 
life, for a long time. Master its dramatic texture. If, 
for example, you wish to find stories in the high cost of 
living, look only to the comic aspect of it, or only to the 
grim tragedy of it, or only to the high adventure of it. 



THE BUSINESS OF THE SHORT STORY 245 

The facts have all these sides and as many more as an 
apple. Their artistic quality shines forth only insofar as 
each feature is isolated and exhibited by itself. And the 
writer can isolate them most artistically who has long 
studied them in isolation. 

How one shall go to work in detail depends upon the 
topic selected and upon the emotional tone. It depends 
too upon the mental habits of the individual writer; 
where one might systematize to a nicety, another might 
blunder along with the sure blindness of instinct. It is 
therefore idle to recommend the scrap-book, the card 
index, the press bureau, and the slumming expedition 
to all prospective writers. We may, however, insist upon 
the broad principle that each learner should aim to order 
his work so as to produce the largest possible number of 
fairly good stories about his special subject. For it is by 
much writing that the power of good writing grows most 
swiftly. The most pernicious habit is the imitation of 
Flaubert; the day-long search for the perfect word, the 
month-long wait for an ingenious turn of the plot. In 
the long run, the greater gain comes to the man who 
masters, not the minutiae of expression, but the nature 
of things written about; and to the man who is not afraid 
to produce a score of mediocre works, while on the way 
to finer achievement. The advance is greater, both 
commercially and artistically. The lower grade of 
fiction produced in the course of practice generally finds 
a market, albeit a cheap one; and thus, as we have else- 
where said, the learner's education pays for itself. On 
the other hand, heavy production of carefully worked 
out second and third rate stories indubitably hastens 
the writer toward the high goal of every artist; namely 
toward that degree of proficiency at which technical manipu- 
lations become habits. The first moment of genuine 
artistry arrives when the writer begins to use, without 



246 SHORT STORY WRITING 

thinking of them, all the cautions and principles which 
we have been discussing in this book. 1 Now, nothing 
lifts one so speedily to this pitch of skill as sheer quantity 
of drill — intelligent drill, of course, and not mere dull 
repetition of rules. The facility with which newspaper 
reporters turn to fiction writing is due in no slight measure 
to the steadiness and magnitude of their narrative prac- 
tice. The number of fictional performances which some 
of them turn out annually proves that they have learned 
to compose and narrate plots in much the same way that 
a person frames ordinary conversational sentences. 
And this is as it should be. 

8. In connection with incessant exercise, there is one 
task which surprisingly few beginners discharge, and 
that is imaginative experimenting. There is a superstition 
abroad that first thoughts are best, and that therefore 
one should dash off a story idea just as it flashes upon one. 
And, as a corollary, the only way to get good ideas is to 
sit back and wait for them to bob up. This is a very 
easy and pleasant fashion, but alas! highly unprofitable; 
and it soon brings its victim to a state of comatose laziness 
out of which nothing short of starvation will goad him. 
It is, in unfamiliar guise, the classic sin of waiting for 
something to turn up. 

I have watched several hundred writers (of all degrees 
of skill); and, with very few exceptions, the successful 
experiment no less thoroughly than the chemist does, 
while the most dismal failures are nearly all incurable 
first-thought writers. 

1 A few fortunates early acquire this ease without orderly help. 
To them technical instruction seems futile. They say they cannot 
think of the thousand and one precepts, nor do they have to. This 
is true. Technique is only a means to establishing habits of be- 
havior. Once the latter are in full swing, thought of the mechanism 
drops out. 



THE BUSINESS OF THE SHORT STORY 247 

Now, what is imaginative experimenting? Well, it 
consists in the deliberate manufacture of many com- 
binations of characters and situations, in various orders 
and with various dramatic movements. Of the many 
resulting plots, usually the two or three best will alone 
prove worthy of writing; the rest go into the waste 
basket. Roughly speaking, there are two types of com- 
bination. First, you may invent a situation and then, 
keeping it unaltered, put different people into it and com- 
pare their behavior. Or, secondly, you may begin with 
a definite person — or with a character trait — and you 
may try it out in many situations, seeking that one 
which brings out most vividly the chosen quality of 
human nature. (Stevenson, it will be recalled, suggests 
in a different connection a third method, that of choosing 
an environment and fitting into it persons and events 
which harmonize with its own peculiar emotional tone. 
But, for reasons elsewhere discussed, this type of story is 
so rare and difficult that we may here ignore the experi- 
menting it calls for.) 

Not until you have gone through these operations 
several times, will you realize how prodigious is the host 
of widely differing stories which lurks potentially in a 
single character or in one situation. And after you have 
experimented much, you will perhaps turn the method 
to profit, by finding a character and a small field of 
situations which yield a dozen, or even a score of stories. 
This is the richest of all finds. For each story in such a 
series helps to sell the next, and — what is still more 
valuable— the collection will be accepted more eagerly 
for publication in book form than a miscellany will. 
Almost every prominent professional writer of brief 
fiction today is producing such series; there is scarcely 
a magazine that is not always seeking them; and there 
are few fiction publishers who are not making favorable 



248 SHORT STORY WRITING 

offers for the book rights. Thus the stories sell twice, 
bringing double profit; they associate the author's name 
with a familiar character or theme and thereby add to his 
reputation; and, through the imaginative experimenting 
they force him to, they ripen his technical skill wonder- 
fully. 

We must not shut our eyes, though, to the dangers of 
such specialization and its imaginative experimenting. 
They always tempt the writer to become mechanical, 
to overwork certain technical tricks which he happens 
to hit off peculiarly well, and soon to reduce his once live 
characters to puppets. The more successful he is with a 
series, the stronger this temptation grows, for publishers 
then urge him to grind out 'more of the same stuff' 
and pay him in advance for stories yet unconceived. 
Now, to write conscientiously and with full vigor, after 
one has spent all the money the story brings, requires rare 
moral fibre, which literary folk do not possess more 
commonly than ordinary mortals. Were it not needless 
cruelty, we might name a dozen authors who, writing 
under contract with advance payments, have given their 
editors stuff beneath contempt. And, in a few instances, 
they have, except in the narrowest legal sense, swindled 
the magazine. 

Theoretically, two preventives suggest themselves: 
the abolition of the contract system, or at least of advance 
payments determined prior to inspection of MSS.; 
or, if not this, then a stricter conscience in authors. 
But both schemes, I fear, will long remain in the realm 
of pure ideas. So long as publishers compete among 
themselves, each will do his best to outbid all rivals in 
the quest of stories; and so long as authors compete, for 
bread-and-butter's sake, they are going to accept the 
highest bid. 

9. There remains one practical question: what are the 



THE BUSINESS OF THE SHORT STORY 249 

story writer's prospects? The answer is hard; for, when 
all is said and done, the chief factors of success and failure 
are the individual and his opportunity, both of which defy 
rules and calculation. There are fashions in fiction, 
as everybody knows; and they are sometimes as capricious 
as the fashions in women's rigging. The last decade has 
seen the story of the stupid life (miscalled realistic fiction) 
give way to half a dozen more thrilling types, such as the 
high-life story, the muck-raking story, the whimsical 
story of every-day life, and even the story of high ad- 
venture (which Stevenson revived with such exquisite, 
even too exquisite, touch and which today Jeffry Farnol 
and others are shabbily counterfeiting). Now, over 
these fluctuations of manner and stuff, only the excep- 
tionally powerful and prolific author exercises appreciable 
influence. Public taste, a very vague thing but as real 
as it is vague, controls them; and it is controlled by a host 
of shifting circumstances, by new discoveries, by the 
deeds and preachings of dominant personalities, by 
political affairs, by social unrest, and everything else that 
goes to make up life in its full reality. 

In estimating the chances of an author with average 
endowments, we must therefore reckon with the proba- 
bility of his being more or less out of key with the favorite 
mood of the hour. There is ever the danger that, in a 
generation which revels in slaughter and red glory and 
desperate hazards, he may be sighing to write of simple 
country folk or tea-table comedies. And yet this perilous 
coincidence is not fatal. For, as we have seen, there is 
not one reading public, but many; and the demand for 
nearly all types of stories is approximately constant. 
The change of fashions affects only the relative cash 
value of them. What the hour approves is worth from 
two cents a word upward (there being no maximum). 
The untimely story, however beautiful, brings newspaper 



250 SHORT STORY WRITING 

rates or even less (except when the value of the author's 
name is added to it, or when the author turns it in on a 
contract). 

Now, even the best writer cannot produce steadily- 
fine specimens of the more profitable style; and the fairly 
skilful one may count himself fortunate if he can hit it 
off once in four tries. Hence there are only two roads 
to money-making: the author may make his few fine 
stories so very fine that they earn him a reputation which 
will be added in dollars and cents to his less admired 
output; or, on the other hand, he may invent an enormous 
number of stories, write them without much attention 
to finish, and make 'quick sales and small profits'. 
Most professional writers choose the second course in the 
beginning of their careers, and by sheer bulk of produc- 
tion acquire a facile technique, a sense of story values 
and of public taste, and a variety of information about 
life which, sooner or later, enable them to enter upon 
the other, pleasanter path. This may not be the course 
of genius, but it is that of the craftsman; and it is to the 
craftsman that this book is directed. 

In the light of all this, we may estimate the writer's 
chances of success as follows: 

The earning power of an author depends upon three 
factors: (1) his sympathy with contemporary tastes and 
thought; {2) the quantity of his monthly output; and (S) 
the ease of his technique. A marked decrease in any one 
of these must be offset by an increase in one or both of the 
others, if success is to be assured. 

Figures are dangerous here; but I venture to say that 
the person who, after a thorough study of technique, cannot 
write every month at least two stories of average magazine 
length (4,500 words, say) should not aspire to become 
a professional. I do not say that he must be able to 
sell two stories a month, nor that all that he writes at this 



THE BUSINESS OF THE SHORT STORY 251 

speed shall wholly please him. The measure is adjusted 
only to his narrative composition. If he can hold the 
pace, he probably has his technique well enough in hand 
to justify further efforts; and also his imagination is likely 
to be moderately vigorous. If he cannot hold it, he still 
may join the great majority, who write occasionally. 
This course may turn out to be quite advantageous. 
If a school teacher, let us say, can sell only five good 
stories a year, that adds from five hundred dollars to a 
thousand or more to the annual income. 

10. The writer who has difficulty in placing his stories 
finds two parties eager to accelerate his rise into pub- 
licity. There is the pay-as-you-enter publishing house, 
and there is the literary agent. The former agrees to 
put the author's collection of stories on the market, if 
the author will kindly pay all the costs and a handsome 
profit to the publisher. Usually the contract he is asked 
to sign is so worded that the author does not foresee the 
sums he will owe. Also, he will not discover until too 
late that printing a book is not the same as publishing it. 
The former process can be done by anybody having access 
to type and presses; the latter is possible only to those who 
have access to the public. To reach readers is not at all 
simple; indeed, it is intricate, expensive, and largely a 
matter of having a long-lived reputation back of the firm 
name. The decline of the small bookstore has made it all 
the harder, and so too has the huge expansion of book- 
advertising campaigns. Now, with possibly one exception, 
all those publishers — so-called — who offer to print at the 
author's expense lack some one or more of the requisites 
of genuine publicity; and the vast majority of them are 
mere job printers preying upon ignorant writers. 

As a rule all publishing houses worthy of the name refuse 
to produce fiction at the author's expense. They can 
better employ their staff in finding and publishing works 



252 SHORT STORY WRITING 

which warrant their assuming the natural business risks 
of investment in them. This practice not only con- 
tributes to their reputation and profits, in the long run, 
but it also serves society well. For a book which is 
worth publishing at all is worth its cost to the publisher 
and the venture of it. And there are so many good pub- 
lishers and so many acute judges of all orders of literary 
merit assisting them that the chance of a meritorious 
volume being rejected by all of them is probably less 
than one in a thousand. The beginner may safely 
conclude that something serious is the matter with his 
collection of stories (or whatever else he may offer), if 
it has gone the rounds of the large publishing houses in 
vain. At the very least, the MS. is untimely. 

11. The story writer, however, is not interested so 
deeply as is the novelist in pay-as-you-enter publishing 
schemes; for his natural avenue to fame is the magazine. 
He accordingly gives more thought to the advertisements 
of the literary agent, who claims to market his wares 
more expeditiously and more profitably than he can. A 
little experience, though, shows that the agent's services 
are usually confined to (1) collecting the author's rejec- 
tion slips, thereby sparing him much agony; and (2) 
typewriting his MSS. and doing it over and over, as 
fast as the poor things become frayed and thumb-branded 
under much editorial handling. In fairness, be it added 
that some agents do more than this, in that they sell 
great quantities of inferior material to fourth-rate peri- 
odicals, to the newspaper syndicates, and to picayune 
sheets in the back-country, the very names of which are 
known only to the compilers of the Publisher's Directory. 
The prices secured in these markets sometimes 
cover the cost of paper, postage, and typewriting. Never- 
theless, the beginner may be thankful for this much, 
which is more than the learner in painting, sculpture, 



THE BUSINESS OF THE SHORT STORY 253 

and music can earn. In all seriousness, I believe that 
the literary agent who renders such service is a benefactor 
of youth. Only let youth understand that the MSS. 
so disposed of are school exercises, nothing more. They 
are not potential ornaments of The Atlantic Monthly or 
Everybody's Magazine or Collier's Weekly. 

In gaining entry to periodicals of quality, the literary 
agent can accomplish nothing that the writer cannot do 
for himself with persistence. The editor will buy from 
the agent only what suits the purposes of the magazine; 
and he would buy it, whether it came to him through the 
mail or through the window. Furthermore, he is quite 
competent to discover good stuff in the midst of the 
stream of trash which pours in upon him daily from the 
Post Office. The better the magazine, the more thorough 
its system of reading contributions and appraising them. 
Several magazines hold conferences over MSS. about 
which some of the office readers are doubtful; and not a 
few stories are inspected half a dozen times before ac- 
ceptance or rejection. What cause, then, has the author 
to complain of inattention and to invoke the literary 
agent to plead his case? Nothing save his own unbusiness- 
like habits drives him to that course. If he allows a re- 
jection slip to discourage him; if, having received one or 
two, he sends the MS. no further; and if he sends it on 
and on without having observed the preferences of each 
recipient periodical, then he ought to fall back upon the 
literary agent. For the agent is at least a shrewd drummer. 

12. In closing, I shall list a few elementary rules and 
warnings which the beginner must respect quite religiously. 

1. Typewrite all MSS. (on one side of the paper). 
Handwriting is little short of an insult to the editor. 

2. At the top of the first page print your name and 
address. 



254 SHORT STORY WRITING 

3. Enclose stamps for return of MS. 

4. Forward MSS. to the magazine, not to some in- 
dividual on the editorial staff (unless you have unusual 
reasons and warrant). 

5. Study the various periodicals; learn what they prefer 
and what they discard. Before sending out a story, ask 
yourself whether it is suited in theme and in treatment 
to the magazine it is addressed to. 

6. Never retire a MS. to the waste basket until you 
have sent it in vain to every publication which might 
be expected to consider it. Fifteen editors may reject, 
and the sixteenth accept it. 

7. Keep a memorandum of all comments passed upon 
each story by editors. This will help you to grasp the 
editorial policy of many a periodical, in time. 

8. Do not work too long consecutively upon a story 
that refuses to come out right. Put it aside for a few 
weeks or months, then return to it fresh. This rule 
holds good for all kinds of intensive intellectual work. 
Many a man handicaps himself heavily by making a 
virtue of sticking at a task until it is finished. Modern 
psychology has proved that this is the wrong way to 
work, and modern business experts have confirmed the 
proof in practice. 

9. Form some habit of regular work. What it shall 
be you alone can decide; only let it be strenuous. Prob- 
ably four hours of writing every da3^ is the least you should 
content yourself with during the years in which you are 
mastering technique. 

10. Shun classic literature as a source of story ideas. 
Study it only for the pleasure of it and for information 
about technique and rhetoric. 

11. Read current magazines carefully, even those 
which you dislike. Watch the work of the more success- 
ful writers. Compare their themes with those which 



THE BUSINESS OF THE SHORT STORY 255 

are being discussed by essayists, journalists, politicians, 
social workers, and other men of the world. Observe 
to what extent fiction draws upon science, reform, and 
practical affairs for its underlying thoughts. 

12. If you have the slightest difficulty in expressing your- 
self, study the dictionary and a good thesaurus persistently. 

13. Practise self-criticism. Try to read your own 
MSS. coldly and with detachment. But, better still, 
find a friend or some professional critic who will pass honest, 
frank judgment upon them. The value of such criticism, 
even though it be inexpert, can scarcely be over-estimated, 
provided you take praise and blame in the right spirit. 

14. Keep some record of every story idea that pops 
into your head, no matter how silly or highflown or 
clumsy it may be in its original form. Infinite are the 
possibilities of combining, weaving, and twisting thoughts 
and what the result will be no man can foretell. Som 
great stories have had trivial, even ludicrous origins. 

15. Expect to spend at least two hard years on tech- 
nique before acquiring noticeable facility of story con- 
struction. Not one writer in fifty spends less than 
that period, though many deceive themselves into be- 
lieving otherwise. To some the warning should be given 
that their writing will deteriorate sadly during the first 
year. In this there is no cause for alarm or despair; it 
is a very natural consequence of shifting one's point of 
view toward what one is doing. The very same seeming 
disaster overtakes the person who, having learned to 
play the piano by ear and without instruction, takes a 
thorough course in fingering and sight reading. For a 
while he cannot even play his old familiar pieces. 



V HE following pages contain advertisements of Macmillan 
books on related subjects. 



OF KINDRED INTEREST 

Stories: New and Oid 

By HAMILTON WRIGHT MABDE 

Illustrated, 12mo, $1.50 

In these days when every one reads short stories, there should be 
no question of the value and interest of Mr. Mabie's "Stories New 
and Old." In a volume of convenient size and attractive appear- 
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American short stories with introductions and a general introduction 
on the short story as a literary form. The authors represented in 
the collection are William Austin, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Haw- 
thorne, Edgar Allan Poe, J. Henry Shorthouse, Dr. John Brown, 
Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Baily Aldrich, James Lane Allen, 
and Owen Wister. The collection has the advantage over some 
others of its kind of including a number of stories which, while they 
are of undoubted value, are comparatively little known. 

English Composition in Theory and 
Practice 

By HENRY SEIDEL CANBY, AND OTHERS 

New and Revised Edition, Cloth, 12mo, $1.25 

A thoroughly practical book of directions for good writing, 
based upon sound principles. An extensive collection of examples 
drawn from all the forms of discourse and inclusive of brief excerpts 
and complete essays is also included. The authors, who are pro- 
fessors of English composition in the Sheffield Scientific School of 
Yale University, have so handled their subject that the work is not 
limited to any one class of students, but is of a general interest to all 
concerned in the writing of good English. 

Expository Writing 

By MAURICE G. FULTON, M.A. 

Professor of English Language and Literature In 

Davidson College 

Cloth, 12mo, $1.40 
In this volume selections chosen from scientific rather than 
literary exposition are accompanied by questions and exercises 
based upon or suggested by the selections. The book is for use as a 
text in college courses in composition and will be of service either in 
the general freshman course, particularly in the scientific and engi- 
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more year. 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
Publishers 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE New York 



Thought-Building in Composition 

A Training-Manual in the Method and Mechanics of Writing, With 

A Supplementary Division on Journalistic Writing as a 

Means of Practice 

By ROBERT WILSON NEAL 
A.M. (Univ. Kansas, Harvard, Yale) 
English and Journalism, Massachusetts Agricultural College 
Sometime 
Instructor in the University of Kansas and the University of Cin- 
cinnati; Acting Head of Department, Rutgers College; 
and Member of the Editorial Department, the 
World's Work 

Cloth, 12mo, VH + 170 pp., index, $0.80 net 

Attention is centered everywhere upon thought and the thinking 
of it, not upon form, except as an incorporation, or adequate out- 
ward embodiment of the thought itself. Whether in agriculture or 
esthetics, physics or psychology, geology or German, by far the 
greatest difficulty that students seem to encounter is that of simple 
thinking — of mastering the thought of the textbook or lecture, and 
of commanding their own faculties in dealing with it. In a manual 
intended for freshmen, it seems wise, therefore, to concentrate 
attention and effort upon thought and its management; especially 
as attention to clearness and accuracy in thinking does and must 
constantly direct attention to clearness and accuracy in word and 
sentence. 

To those who may seek an extended explanation here of the 
"forms of discourse," so-called, the reminder may be given that the 
foundation aim of this manual is merely to present elementary, or 
rather primary, thought-processes in their method. As this manual 
is meant to give practice in the essential processes, not in their use 
toward special purposes, the theoretical discussion of description, 
narration, etc., has been intentionally omitted. The author believes 
however, that the foundation principles of each form of discourse 
are inevitably contained in the simple foundations of clear thinking, 
and that pupils who acquire method in thinking will naturally make 
application of this method to particular purposes as they find them- 
selves confronted with particular problems involving such applica- 
tion. 

The numerous new illustrations and exercises, some of which are 
planned for the student from the village or farm, others of which 
refer to contemporary topics or the local environment of the average 
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of especial interest to women students, render the book available for 
use in college, university or technical school. 






THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
Publishers 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE New York 



The Theory and Practice of 
Technical Writing 

By SAMUEL C. EARLE 
Of Tufts College 

A Distinctively New Treatment of Technical English for the Pro- 
fessional Writer and for the Undergraduate 

12mo, illustrated, $1.25 net 

In Part I the theory of technical exposition is treated with the 
same thoroughness with which argumentation has been studied to 
such good advantage. From this the technical writer will get a 
clear understanding of the fundamental principles of his special form 
of writing; and the undergraduate may get the mental discipline and 
the training in accuracy, completeness, logic, and economy of expres- 
sion that the general student gets in brief writing. The subjects 
specially studied are: "The Transit," "Measuring Horizontal 
Angles," "Directions for Molding a Shaft Coupling," and "The 
Vernier." 

In Part II the practical application of the principles formulated 
in the earlier chapters is given in the form of a summary, and illus- 
trated by reference to the Appendix, which contains twenty-five 
specimens of technical writing taken from standard treatises and 
from engineering magazines. These illustrative articles are not 
given as models, but as actual samples for analysis and criticism. 

Next the special problems of addressing general readers and of 
addressing specialists are studied. Then the structure of chapters, 
paragraphs, and sentences is analyzed. In connection with this the 
general principles of rhetoric which apply to technical writing, and 
the subject of preparation of manuscript for the printer are carefully 
considered. The last chapter gives useful suggestions as to practical 
methods of writing. A brief outline is given at the beginning of 
each chapter with reference to sections, so that separate portions 
of the book may be easily used if desired. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
Publishers 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE New York 



Sentences and Their Elements 

By SAMUEL C. EARLE 
Professor of English in Tufts College 

Cloth, 16mo, 164 pages, $0.80 net 

For some years colleges have been calling for more thorough 
grounding in grammar as a part of the entrance preparation. 
Nevertheless the majority of students still have very inadequate 
knowledge of the principles of language, and are consequently 
seriously handicapped, not only in their classes in English but 
jn all their foreign language work. Most grammars and composi- 
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the general and fundamental facts of language which are the very 
things the students lack. 

The present work gives the materials for a thorough study of the 
general subject of grammar in the first year in college or in the last 
year of those secondary schools which pay careful attention to 
language work. 

Comparisons are made wherever serviceable between English and 
other languages, so that advantage may be taken in the English 
class of any work done in foreign languages, and the same textbooks 
may be used for reference in the classes in foreign language. 

The book is a great help in supplementing the usually inadequate 
knowledge which the majority of freshmen possess regarding the 
principles of English. 



THE MACMULAN COMPANY 
Publishers 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE New York 



The Short-Story: Its Principles and 
Its Structure 

By EVELYN MAY ALBRIGHT 
Assistant Professor of English, Ohio Wesleyan University 

Small 12mo, 260 pages, 90 cents net 

It is all the better for the amateur that Miss Albright has pre- 
pared her book in the orderly manner required for teaching classes, 
and with the needs of the inexperienced pupil in mind. She follows 
the scientific method of analyzing works of recognized character, and 
thus setting forth the distinguishing features of the modern short- 
story, with many suggestions as to the details and the general principles 
of narrative construction. References are made to recent magazine 
literature as well as to a large number of recognized masterpieces. 
In other words, the author undertakes to set forth standards of 
appreciation of what is good in story-writing, illustrating by the 
practice of the masters as contrasted with amateurish failures. 
The result in the mind of an attentive student, is a more lively 
interest in his reading, and the awakening of an intelligent spirit of 
criticism toward his own work. 

Descriptive Writing 

By EVELYN MAY ALBRIGHT 

12mo, $1.25 net 

Miss Albright very sensibly takes up the problems of description 
in the order in which they naturally occur to a writer, beginning 
with the search for material, proceeding then to the working over of 
the material, and finally discussing the more minute considerations, 
such as diction and style. She also considers description in its 
actual relation to other kinds of writing — its service to exposition 
and , more particularly, to narration. A wide range of illustrations is 
provided for classroom use, as it is believed that a study of good 
models should not be neglected. The book is designed for use as a 
text in college courses in composition. It is suggested further that it 
may be of service in the daily theme courses, as an assignment of 
descriptive composition is peculiarly convenient owing to the ease 
with which students may find for themselves fresh and varied 
material, and to the possibility of securing at the same time brevity 
and finish. 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
Publishers 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE New York 



NOV 7 1912 



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